How could he imagine anything could happen with April? She’s beautiful, clever, kind, gifted. He’s Will Parks: a loser with thoughts of hitting on his brother’s girl; a wimp who licked a man’s shitty shoes rather than risk a fight; a sex pest who tugs himself off to holiday selfies.

A love story? What was he thinking?

‘Don’t look so sad,’ Nain says. ‘I can’t bear it, Wilbo.’

Will looks up from the bed to see his mum has left the room. ‘Can I ask you something?’

‘Anything,’ she says, her face lighting up. She wriggles to get comfortable. ‘Let’s talk about art, creative stuff, ideas! I’m tired of talking about who’s going to put the bloody bins out while I’m in here.’

‘Just something else first,’ Will says, feeling the same sense of stupidity wash over him as when he spoke to Danny. ‘How did you know about the library, Nain?’

‘Gosh, who told me? Someone did. Told me to go outside. I could see the smoke and the flashes from the back garden. Terrible.’

‘Not on the day it happened, Nain. You told me about it before. At my birthday. You knew it was going to happen.’

She smiles, but Will’s sure she’s not digesting what he’s saying.

‘You said about it burning down.’

‘Awful, wasn’t it? All those books. Shame.’

‘That’s what you were saying. Don’t you remember?’

‘Oh, I remember it all right.’

‘Who told you, Nain. How did you know?’

‘Who told me? Wasn’t it you?’

‘No.’

‘Well, it can’t have been, can it? Or you wouldn’t be asking me. Someone did. And I went out in the garden, and the smoke! The flames! Like it was right in front of me. Terrible!’

‘Don’t get her excited,’ Will’s mum says in a loud whisper, stepping back inside. ‘She’s had a heart attack, for Christ’s sake.’

‘We were talking about that awful fire,’ Nain says.

Just let it go, man, Will tells himself. Fucking let it go, you absolute dick. Think about something else.

His pointless enquiries are still making him cringe as he waits at the bus stop outside the hospital an hour later. The doctor is with Nain and Will has reluctantly agreed to go home. Outside the ward, it’s like the fresh air has woken him from a daydream, making him confront the things he’d been wondering this week, the daylight illuminating all the silly details.

A coincidence, Will tells himself once again. No more debate to be had.