‘Go on,’ she said. ‘You’ll never guess.’

‘Santa Monica,’ he said. ‘You’re going to fly in to JFK, then drive all the way across the States to the West Coast.’

The women gawped at him.

‘God, Dan Lawrence, you’re an annoying bastard sometimes,’ Katelin said, but she was laughing.

‘You’re never doing that?’ said Duncan.

‘We are, we just decided, while you boys were at the bar,’ Rose-Ann said. ‘It’s been a long time coming, but we’re breaking the chains.’

‘What chains?’ Duncan said.

‘Ah, dearest Duncan,’ Katelin said. ‘There are no chains, it’s a playful metaphor.’

‘But it’s going to take weeks!’

‘Five or six,’ Rose-Ann said.

‘You’re kidding me!’ He looked at Dan to share his outrage, but Dan was seeing only the upside: a potential six weeks of unscrutinised, unjudged, unmonitored living. And Katelin would benefit from cutting loose for a while, because he knew how good it felt, he’d done it himself in the past, jetting off after bands and staying away – sometimes, perhaps, longer than was strictly necessary.

So, privately, Dan applauded Katelin’s impulse, but when she said, ‘It’s going to be great!’ he only said, ‘Yeah, three thousand miles at sixty miles an hour in a hire car, what’s not to love about that?’

‘You’re jealous,’ Katelin said. ‘Patently jealous.’

‘Not at all. Well, OK, maybe a bit. I’ll make you a few mixes, help pass the time.’

‘Thanks,’ Katelin said, ‘but that’d be like having you on the back seat. We’re going to talk to each other, and sometimes listen to the country stations, aren’t we, Rose-Ann?’

‘WJLS, the Big Dawg,’ Rose-Ann said in a southern drawl, and they both fell about laughing.

At the bar, Gordon cleared his throat into the microphone. He was looking as inscrutable as ever: unsmiling, commanding, scanning the crowded pub with his eyes of steel, looking for lightweights and lawbreakers.

‘OK, people,’ he said. ‘So-called smartphones off and out of reach; anyone found googling will be ejected immediately and banned on a Tuesday night for ever after. Write your team name on the answer sheets, legibly please, and same goes for your answers. Any answer I cannae read will be marked as erroneous, no arguments, quizmaster’s word is final. Pencils at the ready for quiz number two hundred and eleven. Meredith’ – he paused here to indicate his surly daughter, who stood behind the bar inspecting her fingernails – ‘will bring the table questions to you all in due course, for you to complete during the interval. First round, happening just now, is literature.’

‘Over to you then, Rose-Ann,’ Dan said, and he pulled his iPhone from his jacket pocket to switch it off. On the screen, it said: @AliConnorWriter followed you. He paused, raised his eyebrows, smiled. Took your time, girl, he thought. Three weeks since he’d followed her.