Later, as they began to gather themselves for the journey home, Ali switched her phone on for the first time that day, and saw at once, among the notifications, the only one she was looking for. Dan Lawrence sent you a link. She slipped out from behind the table and headed for the ladies’, where she shut herself in a cubicle and stood with her back to the locked door, and for a while simply closed her eyes and conjured his image and tried – though failed – to hear his voice. She set her mind loose, let it roam where it wanted to go, and she found (and this was extraordinary to her) that she wanted to tell him about her big idea: talk it all through with him, hear his thoughts on her thoughts, make him real.

But she didn’t have his number and it was pre-dawn in the UK, and anyway, whatever would he think if she should call him out of the blue, a long-lost girlfriend with an Aussie accent? Hey, Dan, this is Alison, how you going?

No. No. She must just look at the link, that’s all: listen to the song as he’d intended. So she opened her eyes and found her way there, and saw ‘Thinkin Bout You’ by Frank Ocean – a song and a singer she didn’t know, and this not knowing made her shiver with anticipated pleasure of the new, the undiscovered.

Her earphones were in her bag, which was still at the table, so she just pressed play and immediately something brilliant and beguiling filled the space around her, and she leaned on the door and let it happen, hearing lyrics that made her remember how much she’d allowed herself to forget. They spoke of first love, uncertainty, a relationship that lay just out of reach, and beneath the words ran a gorgeous, ethereal backing track, meltingly, achingly beautiful. Daniel Lawrence, she thought, you were, and are, my perfect music match. Then she felt the door rattling behind her, an insistent knocking, and Stella’s voice, on a rising note of bewilderment.

‘Mum? Is that you?’

At once, Ali stopped the song. ‘Hi, darling,’ she said. ‘You OK?’

‘Mum? What are you doing?’

Ali unlocked the door and came out. ‘Listening to a song,’ she said.

Stella looked at her, her face stern with uncertainty. ‘Why?’ she said.

‘Why not?’ Ali smiled, and ruffled Stella’s hair. ‘Is everything OK out there?’

‘They’re so drunk,’ Stella said. ‘They’re holding hands across the table and they didn’t even notice me leave.’

‘Uh-oh,’ Ali said. ‘Better get ’em home.’ She slipped the phone into the pocket of her jeans, then ran her hands under the hot tap, flapping them about to dry them off. ‘You need the loo?’ she said.

‘No. I just came to find you.’

‘Right then, let’s get those old reprobates out of here.’

‘Mum?’

‘Yep?’

Stella, about to speak, hesitated instead.