But here you are, now. The chaotic, impatient bustle of Heathrow Arrivals, all the milling, surging, purposeful, harried people. Seven seventeen in the morning, a September Tuesday.

Tilly, strapped back in the buggy, draining her milk, temporarily quiet.

Right, you say, and take the handle of your case again. Ok.

Let me give you a lift, he says, there’ll be a driver for me, a car, I’ll see you safely home.

His eyes are very blue.

For a moment, you almost say yes.

You think of the books that you and your cousin loved, the ones with multiple pathways through, and dozens of endings. You’d read them lying on your stomachs, heads pressed together, holding various pages, options, open. You’d always be careful, trying to make it through, and she’d choose the most reckless routes possible, just to see what might happen. She would have gone with him. You think: If she was still here, at the other end of a WhatsApp stream or the tap of a FaceTime away, she’d say to you, Do it.

But no, you hear yourself saying, it will be easier with your daughter on the train, she’s been cooped up so long, at least in a train you can walk up and down, and besides, 131she gets carsick. The train to Paddington, then, and then the tube, and maybe a taxi for the last bit, at the very end.

But your bags, and the buggy, he says, how will you manage?

People are helpful, you say, they’ve been so helpful, every bit of the way – and it’s true, you realise in a rush, thinking of the taxi driver who found you a trolley, wheeled your bags into the terminal, right up to the Air Canada desk; of Chantal, who upgraded you to premium economy for free, so you and Tilly would have a bit more room. Her long nails, midnight-blue with crystals, tapping, and how, in an attempt to give her something back, you’d said how you admired them, offering up your own short, bitten fingernails, and how she’d beamed. Of the people around you who didn’t roll their eyes or glare at you as Tilly howled; and him, of course; and him – and suddenly, you find yourself on the verge of all the tears you haven’t yet cried.

Oh, he says, oh, and he says, Come here, and he takes your face in both his hands and brushes away the tears with his thumbs, and then there’s a moment, and everything tilts.