Dan stared at the text message, which had bloomed on to the screen of his phone, plain as day for Katelin to read. It had Jim’s name attached to it, Jim from Veronica Ann, and this was simply inexplicable, but hardly more so than the message itself, which read, Hey Daniel, this is Alison, I’ll be at the bar of the Warwick Castle, 8pm tonight, saving you a seat xxx.

He was in the hallway, just outside the kitchen, and Katelin was raging in there, really raging, while Rose-Ann’s voice was another layer of sound, soft and constant, a blanket of soothing platitudes, and meanwhile Duncan had opened the door and was hissing at him: ‘What the fuck, what is it, what’s happened?’ Dan looked at him, without really seeing.

‘She’s in London,’ he said. His head and gut swam with problems and possibilities, and the damage he’d done, and the damage he’d yet to do.

‘Then go, pal,’ Duncan said at once, reading such agony and conflict in his friend’s face that he was compelled to take the decision from him. ‘Just go. We’ll take care of Katelin.’

For a few seconds the two friends just stared at each other, and Dan imagined the blessed, irresponsible relief of simply walking away, then he said, ‘No, I need to try and deal with this,’ and he went back into the kitchen, where Katelin lunged at him, bringing her fists down on to his shoulders and chest, raining curses upon him, crying with a ghastly, broken abandon.

‘Oh my God, Katelin, please,’ Dan said. ‘Katelin, please.’ He caught hold of her hands and held them tight and still between his. ‘Please, come on, can you listen to me, can you?’ They were standing on shards of broken porcelain, and scattered roast potatoes, and gruesome pools of bloody juice from the beef, although the remains of the rib itself had been purloined by McCulloch, who was hunched over it in his basket, uncertain if this was legal. Katelin was quieter now, but there was no sense of a crisis passing, only of the briefest pause in violent hostilities. The atmosphere in the room was thick with mistrust and reproach and the terrible, weighty sense of an ending. Rose-Ann had one ineffectual hand in the middle of Katelin’s back and Duncan was trying to make no noise at all while moving glasses and plates from the table to the sink, in case she should reach for another missile. Dan released her fists and took her face between his hands, and they stared at each other with a kind of appalled grief. She knew him so well, knew the meaning of every expression she’d ever seen on his beloved, hated face, and she knew now from his eyes exactly what he was about to say.

‘Don’t speak,’ she said. ‘Don’t apologise. Just go.’