He asked her did she ever want to stay in bed and for days on end. She told him she absolutely had felt that way, and that there had been times when the darkness had floored her so much that she did indeed stay in bed for days and days. But then she realised she had to start living again. She had to move on.

‘Coming here was the first step to moving on for me,’ Lorcan told her. ‘We actually split about three months ago. It was, on the surface, amicable, but, as time went on, it became less so. We’d bought a house together, and originally we decided just to live separately in that space until we were able to either sell up altogether or one of us was able to buy the other out.’

Jo pulled a face. She could have told him how that was going to end.

‘Yeah,’ he said, noticing her grimace. ‘That was ranked in the top five of all-time bad ideas. But initially I thought it would blow over. That if we continued to exist in the same space then maybe there was a chance we could come through it. I had all these fanciful notions that we’d be one of those smug couples who could boast about it bringing us closer together in the long run. I became the perfect housemate. I was more of a considerate housemate than I’d ever been a partner. You know the score, always making sure to put the toilet seat down after I’d used it, not leaving a mountain of used tea bags in the sink. The kind of things that used to drive Sophie mad.’

‘But it didn’t work,’ Jo said and again it wasn’t a question.

‘Nope. I think when I stopped giving her things to complain about it wasn’t the case that I suddenly transformed into her dream man in front of her eyes, it was more that she, well, she didn’t really have any reason to talk to me at all. And that’s when she needed to break free – she needed to have as little to do with me as possible. In the end, she moved out. I came home from work and she was gone. Note on the table, all that stuff that we think only happens in movies. That was a month ago and just before we finally got an offer on the house.’ He stopped and sighed.