Michael was pleased. He reached out and brought her closer, his arm across her shoulders, and Ali knew that if she’d resisted the Lismore plan he wouldn’t have done this; but she had learned the habit of compliance. She closed her eyes and retreated into her own mind, switching realities from this life in Adelaide to her other life, where Daniel was always waiting, thinking about her thinking about him. She knew he did, knew he never really stopped, because neither did she; she was in touch with his presence, and he with hers.

She considered the utterly beautiful song he’d sent, and how unexpected tears had coursed down her face as she listened. Then she thought about the track she’d sent back, Bowie’s version of ‘Wild Is The Wind’, with all its emotion and intent and conviction, and she imagined herself lying beside Dan as he listened to it.

She looked at her watch. In Scotland, it would be half past nine in the morning. She thought about Edinburgh, and wondered why life had taken him there. She knew he had Katelin, and together they had Alex, because it was all there to be seen on the web, and it had triggered curious feelings of regret and uncertainty, but also of a kind of relief that he was living a good life. She would never have searched for him on the internet before the first song came: never. He would have remained in 1979, just as all of her Sheffield life had, shadowy and distant, the clocks stopped, a vault of memories sealed against the passing of time. But here Daniel was now, front and centre in her private mind, and because of him, inevitably, other ghosts were moving towards the light too, other memories of her youth, among them her brother, whose remembered smile caused her to bow her head in shame that for far too long she’d – stubbornly, stoically, selfishly – turned her face away from her past, believing it to be the cure.