‘Will I nip out to the corner shop?’ said Katelin. ‘Get you something more downmarket?’

She was a little tetchy today. She’d been very pleased with the bowls, and Rose-Ann, who had a great influence on Katelin’s buying decisions, had noticed them immediately and said, ‘Sweet bowls, Katelin, gorgeous colours, they really pop against the neutrals,’ and Dan had glanced at them, puzzled, because he could’ve sworn he’d seen them before, and said, ‘Haven’t we had these ages?’ then remembered Sheila’s bowls of baba ganoush and hummus on the mosaic table in her back garden. Probably not identical, but near as damn it, and he’d thought, Jesus, the perils of a parallel life. Katelin had said she didn’t know why she bothered, which had a lot less to do with the new crockery than with the fact that he’d been far too quiet for her liking that morning, far too self-absorbed, and when she’d finally asked him what – or rather, who – he was thinking about, he’d said Donovan, and she’d held his gaze as if she had more to say, then tutted and walked away.

She’d been right though. He had been too quiet and self-absorbed, because although he really was thinking about Donovan, it was only in the context of Alison, who hadn’t responded to the song. Granted, he hadn’t in fact sent it; Lisa had done the deed, and then only by accident. But Alison didn’t know that; as far as she was concerned this might be him trying to make her turn her head and notice him again. It maddened and depressed him that her lack of response to a song he hadn’t meant to send could ambush his mood in this way, so that all his careful defences were suddenly in jeopardy, but anyway it only underlined what he already believed: Ali Connor would never leave Michael McCormack. More than this, he told himself he’d perhaps read her all wrong and she hadn’t ever wanted anything more than the frisson but relative safety of a long-distance, phone-based love affair, and that the perfect union of Alison and Daniel had never been any more tangible to her than a fairy tale.