But, look now, here she was, knocking on the front door, coming into the house with Daniel’s dog on a lead, and there was something about this incidental detail – Alison’s easy, familiar stewardship of the little terrier – that struck Marion as comfortably intimate, as if everything was now settled between them. She was surprised. She’d expected blushes and awkwardness and averted gazes. But then Alison Connor had been only seventeen last time she laid eyes on her … only seventeen, and in considerable distress. She remembered watching her run away down their road. She remembered thinking maybe it’d be for the best if Alison never came back, and then she hadn’t come back, but it hadn’t been for the best, not really; not for Daniel.

‘Hello,’ Ali said, and gave her such a lovely, full, ingenuous smile that Marion found herself immediately faltering in her resolutions. Ali stepped forward and gave Marion a hug, which she returned, a little hesitantly. ‘I’m determined to call you Marion,’ Ali said, ‘even though I really feel you’ll be Mrs Lawrence for ever and a day.’

Australian accent. Slim as a girl. Dark brown hair, brown eyes, pale face, pretty – oh, very pretty. She always was.

‘Well, Alison, you’ve not altered much,’ Marion said, stepping back and giving her a full appraisal. ‘I can’t say this isn’t a shock, love, you turning up here, but it’s nice to see you. It’s like going back in time, looking at you!’

‘It’s really nice to see you too.’ Ali wasn’t going to apologise, for either the past or the present. She was here, and that was that. ‘Is Mr Lawrence here?’ she said, and then she laughed. ‘I can’t call him Bill, I just can’t.’

‘Dad’s gone upstairs,’ Dan said. He tried to communicate with only his eyes that he was so fucking proud of her, of everything about her, the way she was, the way she’d handled that arrival, the way she looked. Christ, even the dog was besotted. McCulloch had never had much time for women, but he was all Alison’s now.

‘May I go up and see him?’

Marion and Dan exchanged a look. He’d been shocked himself at how reduced his dad was, how much he’d deteriorated since he last saw him, which – to his shame – had been last Christmas.

‘Sure,’ he said now. ‘But he’s … well, he’s sort of retreated right into himself. It’s hard to know what he’s thinking any more.’

‘No, I know, but I’d really like to go and sit with him, if that’s OK?’