She tried to reach him, as she’d reached him before, but her songs weren’t enough any more. The first arrived before Dan had left Adelaide; ‘You’re The Best Thing’, Paul Weller, the Modfather in his post-Jam, Style Council guise. At the gate, about to board the plane, Dan saw the link on his phone, but he didn’t open it, didn’t need to, he knew it well, liked it a lot as a love song, but he wondered, had she listened properly to the words? They made no sense from a woman who’d stepped straight back into the familiar, at the very first challenge. He could’ve sung it back at her, word for word; he could play the chords and sing the song, standing outside her house in Millionaire’s Row or wherever it was she lived, and take another emotional pummelling when she regretfully shut the window, sadly drew the curtains. Or he could close his heart and ignore her. This is what he did.

Then, when he switched on his phone in Hong Kong, Van the Man arrived, with ‘Someone Like You’, arguably the best love song ever recorded. Christ, she was using these songs like ammunition. And it was bedlam here, a hive of international humanity, queues and chaos through security, and only a two-hour stopover which barely gave him time to find the bar, so he saw the link, and spared himself the agony, taking a kind of strength from not listening and anyway, what was the point of the songs if they led nowhere? A love song sent without any real intent was a hollow gesture. Worse than hollow; it was a mockery of what they could’ve pulled off back there in the hippy time warp of Sheila’s house: the spectacular, life-enhancing coup they’d intended before McCormack arrived, and swiftly left, with his most prized possession safely stowed beside him in his low-slung car.

Landing at Heathrow was like waking up in a familiar bed after a turbulent dream. Here was his world, among people who sounded much like him, in a climate that was as damp and cold as it ought to be in early February. God, he was glad he lived here, he thought; who could bear Australia, who could endure it? Too big, too far away, too damn hot. He was over Australia, done with it.