She’d propelled it through cyberspace to Dan in Edinburgh, to show him she understood, she remembered too, she believed their shared past was worthy of homage and what better than another nostalgic high point in Kev Carter’s mix tape? For a while she became as obsessed with this as she’d been with ‘Pump It Up’: pressed play each time the song ended, entirely drawn in by Debbie Harry’s fallen-angel face and unmatched magnetism, her astonishing allure in a demure yellow frock. She played it four times, then played it once again, just for Clem Burke’s drumming, and then, mid-listen, she’d suddenly been poleaxed by a seismic shift in mood, a violent landslide into a melee of regret and sorrow and dry-mouthed anxiety. Ghosts and shadows filled her head: a mother, a brother, a household loaded with shame.

She’d stopped the music at once, snapped shut the lid of her laptop, and sat for a while, steeling herself against the ancient grief, and then, because she knew Beatriz could sniff out sadness like a bloodhound after quarry, she’d got herself into her running gear and made it to the top of the stairs – just in time, as luck would have it – to head her off with a display of cheerful nonchalance, pulling out her earphones and smiling, batting away Beatriz’s doomy warnings in the way she always did, the way Beatriz expected.

A run was a good idea though, a great idea, her go-to antidote. Pounding it out through the parklands, it was a kind of meditation that stopped her thoughts from running amok; it tamed and contained them if all she could hear was music in her ears and her own steady breathing. She put the earphones in and the iPod on shuffle, and first up, there was Lynyrd Skynyrd with ‘Free Bird’, and her heart lifted at once because here was her all-time favourite running track, not for the glory of the build-up or the epic guitar solo – although there were those things, too – but for Ronnie Van Zant’s voice, which Ali loved beyond all reason. She sang as she ran, and she didn’t care who heard her, because this was all the therapy she needed, and it didn’t cost 250 dollars an hour. She was already two minutes into the ripping solo, picking up her pace to match the guitars, when, in her peripheral vision, she saw there was someone steaming up at a right angle to her on her left-hand side, bearing down on her fast, so she flinched, braked, and then processed the fact that this sweaty stranger chasing her down through the gums was her husband, Michael.

‘God,’ he said. ‘You’re hard to catch.’ He wore a button-down Oxford shirt, blue chinos, shiny tan loafers, and beads of sweat bloomed on his brow. He bent over, hands on his knees, to recover his breathing.