‘He loved his food,’ she nods at George’s waistband, ‘like you. The cancer drugs made him feel sick. He didn’t want to eat much, just custard and jellies and soup. I tried puréeing stuff, but he hated it. And there was always so much to do. Making sure he had all his tablets and his checks. Rolling him over for the bed baths. I started to buy ready-made meals for me, and baby-food for him. Banana and avocado. Apple, spinach and pear.’

George can imagine Betty with her ready meals. Italian one night, Chinese the next. He wonders if that’s what she eats on the days they don’t see one another. Another dig to his ribs. Maybe cooking Bill’s old food makes her sad, but George knows he won’t stop her. She needs it. Needs to flour and roll and crimp pastry, fill her sterile house with stew and steam, just like he needs to moan and tut and rant and rail. They understand one another, George and Betty.

Dan

(My my my, said the spider to the fly)

ATTICUS WANTS TO COOK Dan dinner. He should just text Atticus back and say no and that would be the end of it. Then he can move on with his life. The problem is, the other Dan, the one who lives inside this one, really wants to see Atticus. He’s desperate to go to his house, where there may be clues about him. He wants to turn up in a deerstalker hat and Inverness cape, puffing on a calabash pipe. Wants to say, ‘Never trust to general impressions, my boy, but concentrate yourself upon details,’ then study every inch, every nook and cranny with a giant magnifying-glass.

Dan cannot count the other Dan out of his head or scrub him off in the shower. In fact, the other Dan gets all sorts of ideas when he’s in the shower and he comes out feeling dirtier than when he went in.

Dan has dreamed about his teeth falling out, about missing trains and spilling coffee. He has woken in the night with the rusty taste of his heart in his throat and reached for his phone to read the text over and over again, and it’s always the same.

COUNT DANULA. DINNER AT MINE. 14 MADEIRA DRIVE. WEDNESDAY 8 P.M. FITZ MOST WELCOME.

It’s as if Atticus is shouting at him, as if Dan’s in trouble. Is dating supposed to feel like this? He wants to delete the text and hide, but there’s no point. The words are branded on his brain. The text came on Sunday night and now it’s Wednesday morning. What is he going to do?

He goes to call Luke more than once, but what will he say? ‘Hello, buddy. I’ve got a date with my client this week and I need some tips. By the way, he’s a man.’