Sam looks to her, eyes with an underwater glaze. “Hey.” He raises a hand.

“What time did you get in?”

“Late,” he says with a shrug. “Two-ish. We had some beers after the shift.”

“Sleep well?”

“Oh. OK.” He sighs, cricking his neck. “Not great, but OK.”

How many hours straight through? Even a late night gives him, what, six, maybe seven hours of uninterrupted sleep—the thought of it, of seven straight hours, of how it would feel. Despite this he still looks tired, with heavy shadows beneath his eyes—the indoor pallor of the professional chef. He sleeps in the spare room, which is no longer, it seems, spare: it is his room now, just as the room that should be theirs is hers—hers and their son’s, Tom’s crib unused, a dumping ground for clothes, while Tom sleeps with Cate. Easier that way, for the many, many times Tom wakes.

He turns back to the coffee, plunges, pours. “You want one?”

“Sure.”

He makes his way over to the fridge for milk. “On an early one today,” he says. “Doing lunch.”

He works as a sous-chef in a restaurant in the center of town. Ten years behind London was what she heard him say on the phone to a friend back in Hackney the other night, but OK, you know, OK. Getting some input already.

He was on the verge of opening a place in Hackney Wick, before the rents went mad. Before she got pregnant. Before they moved out here.

He hands her her coffee, takes a sip of his own. “Did you wash my whites?”

She looks around, sees the pile in the corner, three days’ worth. “Sorry, no.”

“Really? I left them in your way, so you wouldn’t forget.” Sam goes over to the pile, lifts the least stained overalls to the light, starts scrubbing it viciously with the scourer at the sink. Outside the drizzle is thickening into rain.

“What are you two up to today?” he says.

“Washing, I suppose. Unpacking.”

“What about that playgroup? The one Mum mentioned?” He nods to the brightly colored flyer stuck up on the fridge, the flyer Alice brought around the other day. Alice, Sam’s mother, with her concerned face, mouth pursed somewhere between a grimace and a smile: It’s a lovely little group, it really is. You might make some friends. Alice, the mastermind of the plan to buy a little house for you all. In Canterbury. Alice, their savior. Alice, who has a key to the lovely little house and likes to pop round unannounced.

“Yeah,” Cate says. “Maybe.”

“And we’ve got that thing tonight,” Sam says, giving up on the scouring, hanging his overalls on a chair to dry, “don’t forget. At Mark and Tamsin’s.”

“I haven’t forgotten.”

“I’ll pick you up, shall I?”

“Sure.”

“But Cate?”

“Yes?”

“Try and get out today, won’t you? Take Tom out?”