‘There is nothing to do, Daniel. I don’t have a plan for how this evening is supposed to go. You don’t like the meal, we get a takeaway. You don’t want red wine, I’ll go and get you a beer. You don’t want this –’ he nods to his hand on Dan’s leg – ‘and it doesn’t happen. I just want you here, in my house, around my table. I’m happy enough just to watch you frowning and counting under your breath. There is no script, no expectation. Just. Be. With. Me.’ He punctuates each word with a squeeze that shoots up Dan’s leg. Unable to speak, Dan just nods, then takes another gulp of wine. Atticus gives his leg one last press and gets up to take the pot off the stove.

The dinner is quietly delicious and accompanied by the clink of cutlery as a late-spring evening breeze wafts in from the open window above the sink. When they finish, Dan tells Atticus he’s training for the Ironman with his cousin Luke as he keys his calories into his phone.

‘Sounds onions. Is your cousin as handsome as you?’ Atticus asks, as he collects the plates and stacks them in the sink.

‘Much better-looking,’ Dan says, pocketing his phone, grabbing the pot and taking it to the stove.

‘Impossible,’ Atticus says, and then, more quietly, almost to himself, ‘That fucking blush.’ Dan obliges him with another and goes to start the washing-up, but Atticus bats him away. ‘Leave it. I’ll do it tomorrow.’

‘Please,’ Dan says, ‘let me do this. It helps me relax.’

‘If cleaning is what relaxes you, go mad.’ Atticus casts an arm around the kitchen and grins. ‘Have at it, sailor.’ Dan settles for washing up and wiping the sides.

When the tea-towel is hanging neatly over the oven door and the sauce is blotted from the table, Atticus takes Dan’s hand and the rest of the wine and leads him into the living room. He turns the record over and lowers the needle, then pulls Dan with him onto the couch.

Lizzie

(The offside rule)

LATE LAST NIGHT A new girl arrived at the shelter. Lizzie had been in the kitchen when Tess came in to make soup for her, as she always did for new arrivals. ‘Good for the soul,’ she’d say, but they never wanted it. Even the ones with missing teeth usually turned it down.

‘You must come and meet Sarah,’ she’d said, but Lizzie kept finding jobs that didn’t need doing, until there was nothing left for it but to walk into the living room and say her awkward hello.

Sarah had the beginnings of a black eye. She’d been lost inside the comfortable sofa, a mug of tea clamped between her bony knuckles, muddy fingers leaving traces on the polar-white china. Lizzie wondered what slogan she’d paint on her mug one day.