If the clamor of conversation in the corridor hadn’t been so loud—if there hadn’t been so much laughter, so many greetings, so much chatter—Lily might have been certain she’d heard a sigh at the other end of the line.

“Of course it’s not. It’s about me trying to get made managing partner, just like we’ve always discussed, and which I’ve got a much better chance of achieving by working out here for a while.”

Lily tried to settle Daniel’s words in her head, tried to get them to sit down in a straight, orderly line, but they were jumping over one another like recalcitrant children. “I know that’s always been the plan. But still . . . when you left . . .” She faltered, felt her courage turn around and start walking away. She knew that if she didn’t ask the question it would haunt her for days. She took a deep breath and forced the words out before her resolve disappeared. “There’s not someone else, is there?”

Her words were muted in her ears so that for a second she couldn’t be sure whether she’d said them out loud.

“Of course not. Don’t be silly. It’s just work. Are you telling me that if you got an opportunity like this you wouldn’t jump at it?”

Lily tried to imagine herself upping sticks, moving to another continent, leaving Daniel and Phoebe at home by themselves, but it was so unlikely—absurd, almost—that she couldn’t begin to envisage it.

“Lil, this clearly isn’t the time to discuss it. I’ll email later. It’s probably easier to lay out the details if I write it all down. It’ll give us time to think it through. I’ll call again tomorrow.”

“But, Daniel—”

“There’s someone at the door—I’d better go. Give Phoebe my love, won’t you? I hope it goes really well.”

“Daniel—”

Lily pulled the phone from her ear, glanced at its screen, and saw the red icon informing her that the call was over. She leaned against the wall, her arms folded across her chest.

An extra six months. A year of living apart. The weeks flipped forward in her head. If Daniel stayed on he wouldn’t be home permanently until well into next year. Phoebe would have submitted her university applications. Lily would be in a new job. And she would almost certainly be an orphan.

Behind her, the kissing couple were discussing their honeymoon plans—South Africa, Botswana, Rwanda—and Lily headed farther along the corridor, away from them.

The sound of children laughing made her look back. Two little girls were skipping toward her, holding hands, plaits bouncing over their shoulders. The way one of them smiled and ran ahead dragging the other behind her caused Lily to stare at them with an uncanny sense of recognition.

She was reminded of sitting on a beach more than thirty years ago, the sand itching between her toes. From somewhere along the crowded shore music had crackled through the static of a transistor radio, Madonna singing about getting into the groove. Lily had been reading The Catcher in the Rye, unsure whether she was enjoying the novel or simply that it was contraband reading: her English teacher had refused to let her borrow it from the school library, had told her it was too grown-up for her, so she had gone to the public library and borrowed it from there instead.