Lauren’s dad backs away from the window, perching on the edge of the bed. He reaches beneath his towel and shuffles his wet shorts down his legs into a heap on the floor.

‘Thanks for showing me around,’ the girl says, standing at the window.

He smiles and stares at her. ‘God, you’re so beautiful. Everyone says that, right?’

More giggling. But no smile now. ‘I should probably get back to my –’

‘Sit here,’ he says. He’s slackened the towel behind him and now it rests across his legs. He pats the bed.

There’s something about how he talks to her, Will notices, the expectation in his words, the unspoken offence that’ll be taken if she doesn’t comply.

She sits a clear metre from him, hand clasped between legs. But in one movement he closes the gap and goes in for a kiss. Will can see the tongue that prods in and around her mouth.

‘I’ve been wanting to do that all night,’ he says.

The girl’s face is pure panic, but she’s somehow frozen. Tempted to reveal himself though Will is, the old pram lady was very specific about timing. A moment longer, Will thinks. Just a moment.

‘I think I’m younger than you think I am,’ she says. ‘I’m not here with Lauren. I’m friends with Holly, Lauren’s little sister. You know Holly?’

He dismisses her point with a gesture, not mentioning that of course he knows Holly, given that he’s her father.

She goes to speak. ‘I’m only –’

‘We’re just two human beings,’ Lauren’s dad interrupts. ‘Two people, enjoying each other.’ He looks her up and down like she’s a car for sale. ‘Nineteen, I’d say. Twenty, at a push.’

She doesn’t look nineteen or twenty at all.

‘So tense,’ he says, massaging her slender shoulders. A small hump rises in his towel as he slides one of her top’s straps to the side.

‘I don’t think I –’

‘Loosen up a bit. Tonight’s a night for letting it all go. Just doing what feels right.’ He nods as he says it. A Magician’s Nod.

‘I don’t –’

‘I know why you came up here. I know what you really want.’ He kisses the nape of her neck, her back arching away from him. ‘Don’t overthink it. Just go with it.’

There’s a fire inside Will. He wants to smash this shiny bullshit house to pieces. And he wants to cry. And he’s not sure which of these desires is going to win out.

Will can see what would follow now if he wasn’t here. A girl – confident, sassy – who climbed those stairs without a care, descending them with a life forever separated into before and after. Such a small unit of time separating the two, long enough for the world to change completely.