‘Yeah,’ she said, echoing him. ‘And no.’

He looked at her with a kind of gentle scrutiny, letting his eyes linger over her features.

‘I thought I’d learned to forget all about you,’ Ali said.

‘I was certain you had.’ Dan smiled, put his glass down, folded his arms. ‘You did the biggest runner in history. There was a gig to play, y’know. We could’ve been famous, you would’ve been the Union’s winning ticket, our Chrissie Hynde, our Debbie Harry.’ His tone was light as he teased her with the past, but he’d misread her mood, she wasn’t being playful, because suddenly it was all too much, she’d been ambushed by the familiarity – his voice, his inflection, the way he dipped his chin to look at her, his half-smile, the line of his jaw, the hollow of his cheek, the shape of his eyes. Here he was, the other part of her, the missing piece. She ached with relief, but also with sorrow, and although she didn’t mean to cry, the tears came too fast and too stealthily for her to halt them.

‘Alison,’ he said, and he took her in his arms. ‘I’m sorry. I’m an oaf. I do know this is a big deal, it’s bigger than big, and I’m blethering on like an idiot.’ He stopped talking and leaned in to kiss the side of her head. ‘You still smell the same,’ he said into her hair.

She said, ‘You do too, and I love hearing you again, I love your voice, and the feel of your arms around me. It’s just too good.’

‘Alison,’ he said again.

She drew back and looked at him, and he wiped away the residual tears from under her eyes with his thumbs.

‘What do you want to do?’ he said.

‘Do?’

‘Yeah. I mean now, and tomorrow, and the next day. What do you want to do?’

‘Right now, I just want to finish this red wine with you,’ she said.

‘Fair enough.’

‘Then I’ll leave the car where it is and get a taxi home.’

‘Right.’ This didn’t sound good.

‘Then I’ll meet you back here, in Rundle Street, tomorrow morning.’

‘OK.’ Better, much better, although he desperately wanted to take her back to his hotel room, undress her, and spend all night with her, above her, beside her, beneath her.

‘We need to talk,’ she said.

‘Sure thing. And after that is there any chance I could get my hands on you?’

She tipped back her head and laughed, and he stared at her lovely throat, thought how much he’d always loved to make her laugh, and how rare her laughter had been when he’d known her at sixteen. He said, ‘I keep thinking you’ll vanish, Alison. I mean now, right here, I’m worried you’ll just melt away like an apparition.’