‘She must’ve been clever,’ she’d said this morning, standing at the bedroom mirror, dabbing concealing make-up on to the bluish shadows under her eyes. He knew immediately, of course, who was meant by ‘she’ and he groaned inwardly. He was lying in bed, wishing to be asleep, not answering her questions, rebutting her statements. ‘I mean, to write that book?’ she said. Yes, this sounded innocuous enough, but oh no. No, no, no. They had wandered into dangerous territory.

‘She was good at English,’ Dan said, then added a precautionary, ‘I think.’

‘Yeah, well, Claire said that much at Christmas. But she must’ve been a cut above, at school?’

‘No,’ Dan said. ‘Well, maybe. We were at different schools, so I can’t really say.’

Silence. Then, ‘So, how did you meet, again?’

He sighed, and pushed himself up so he could see the back of Katelin’s head. He was dead beat, hadn’t come to bed until 2 a.m. because he’d had a rambling, indulgent live chat on air with a New York radio station where an old friend of his from the NME years peddled classic British rock on a weekly show. He glanced at the time on his phone. Ten past seven. Jesus! He should’ve gone to sleep in Alex’s empty bed – foolish to crawl in here expecting to be left alone. Katelin eyed him briefly, then looked at herself in the mirror again, waiting.

‘Like I said, we got the same bus sometimes,’ Dan said. ‘We got chatting.’

‘About what?’

‘Seriously? You do realise how long ago this was, don’t you?’

‘I mean, did you have much in common? Or was it just that you fancied her?’

‘Look,’ Dan said, ‘don’t get fixated.’

She laughed, and turned around to face him. ‘I’m interested,’ she said brightly, ominously. ‘That’s all.’

‘OK, well, she liked the same music as me.’

Katelin nodded slowly. ‘I see, right. Music,’ she said, as if he’d just said stamp collecting, and actually expected her to believe it.

‘Yeah.’ He was not going to lose his cool. ‘We talked about music.’

‘So the fact that she was clearly bloody gorgeous had absolutely nothing to do with it?’

He closed his eyes. He cursed his mother’s guileless purchase. He cursed Katelin’s forensic insecurity. Of course she was on to something, this wasn’t simply her imagination working overtime, but – he repeated to himself – neither was this a Katelin versus Alison scenario, because … well, one of them was here in Edinburgh with him, the other ten thousand miles away. And anyway, what was he supposed to do? Tell Katelin everything? Yeah, right.

‘I bet you’ve googled her,’ she said.

He was silent, but she knew he had, and of course he had. Most days now, for over three months.

‘Well, I certainly have,’ Katelin said. ‘There’s not a single photograph online in which she looks anything but beautiful.’