“I know, I know. I get it, only . . . this might be about work.” There’s a long silence, which he resolves not to break. Finally her voice comes to him, quiet and tiny. She says, “It’s just . . . I think I might have done something really stupid.”

—

“I set you up,” says Sally-Ann.

They are standing outside the headquarters of the South Yorkshire Police. The soon-to-be old headquarters; the building is less than a month from demolition. With a backward stretch, and standing on tiptoe, it is possible to see the shiny new building a few streets over, twice the size. The move has begun; around them huddle numerous unmarked white vans filled with paperwork no one knows what to do with.

Sally-Ann plays with her earring, picks at her nails, and fails to meet his eye directly. She’s still draped in fabric; a thick, long-sleeved turtleneck that must be ridiculously hot. As if that wasn’t enough, she’s topped it off with an incongruous paisley summer scarf that even Audrey Hepburn couldn’t have pulled off. She must mistake his interest in her because she says, “Please don’t look at me like that. You’re a terrible person to disappoint, do you know that?” She looks round as a group of people exit the building. One of them, a short woman Tyler vaguely recognizes, waves to Sally-Ann, and she smiles and waves back. Then she sighs heavily. “Oscar,” she says, “I set you up with Oscar.”

A bus pulls up at the light and lets out a sharp hiss of pneumatic brakes.

“I didn’t know, Adam. I didn’t know about any of this, I swear.”

At least now he knows how Oscar got his number. “Tell me,” he says.

Sally-Ann swallows. “We were at school together. I hadn’t seen him for years, and then we bumped into each other out clubbing one night. We got talking and he seemed different to how he used to be. Not like when we were at school, all full of himself and throwing dirt in your hair in the playground—”

“Sally-Ann.”

“Sorry. So he took me for a drink one night, old friends catching up sort of thing, and then he told me he was . . . well, that he was exploring his sexuality. It wasn’t long after I’d met you, and I thought, you know who might be good for each other?”

The bus pulls away, covering them in a blanket of dark fumes.

“Why didn’t you just ask me?”

“You’d have gone along with that, would you? A blind date? Come off it, Adam. You’re a nice guy, mostly. You’re intelligent, and you look great, but, well, you’re not exactly sociable. So I gave him the hard sell and convinced him it might be better if you met sort of spontaneously.”

“The pub. He chatted me up at the bar while you watched.”

“I’m sorry, it seemed harmless enough.”