In early March the women flew back to Edinburgh from London, so there was no reunion on the platform of Waverley Station, instead they shared a cab home and it dropped off Rose-Ann in New Town then continued down to Stockbridge with Katelin. Dan hadn’t known how he’d feel when he saw her, or if she’d sense a change in him, but it turned out she was too full of her trip to notice that Dan might be more subdued than she’d expect. She was lightly freckled, very talkative, a little plumper than before – Desperate Dan portions, she said – and she wore an LA Lakers baseball cap with her red hair swinging out of the back of it in a ponytail, like a cheerleader on match day. She was golden with sunshine, effervescent; the adventure had done her good, she said. She was ready for a break from Rose-Ann, mind you, but they’d had an amazing time together, amazing. ‘She overthinks,’ Katelin said when they were in the house. ‘That’s all I’d say. She overthinks every decision, weighs up the pros and cons until you can hardly remember what it was you’re meant to be deciding. And she had a lot to say about Duncan’s transgression: we chewed that one over all the way from JFK to Cincinnati.’

‘What! That’s got to be seven hundred miles,’ Dan said. He was making her a pot of tea, which she said would be the first decent cuppa since she’d left home, it was all coffee in the States, disgusting coffee that sat all day on a hotplate, no wonder the refills were free, or Lipton’s Yellow Label tea dunked in a mug of lukewarm water. Chat, chat, chat; she was so wired, thought Dan, but jet lag could have that effect, stringing you along with a strange, chemical energy. Or it could sense your own profound unhappiness and drag you down further into a miserable limbo. Perhaps, he thought, jet lag simply adapts itself to match your own state of mind.

‘Yeah, no idea how many miles it was,’ Katelin said, chatting on. ‘But it was twelve hours’ driving and I’d say the conversation might have gone on to last longer than his affair did, but I said to her, I said, can we stop talking about Duncan when we cross the Cincinnati line, and she said, “Oh my gosh, Katelin, I am so sorry, I’m talking a blue streak here and you’ve been so patient.”’ This was a perfect impersonation of Rose-Ann’s West Coast drawl, and Dan laughed.