Suppressing a sigh, Robin looked down at his phone at the exact second it stopped buzzing. A bubble popped up on his locked screen indicating he had a missed call from an unknown number just before the display went to sleep. Probably just his sister using the surgery phone.

He looked around. The signing event wasn’t going particularly well. Robin was sitting precisely in the center of Waterstones Angel Islington at a round table piled up with copies of Without Her. When he had first got there, thirty minutes previously, the stack had been ridiculously high. Now it was more realistic, but not because of sales. Robin had hidden most of the copies under the table, to make the pile seem less daunting. Still, though, people seemed to disperse when they saw him like paper clips flying away from the wrong side of a magnet.

A plucky young Waterstones employee, who had introduced herself as Wren, came over with an enthusiastic bounce. She was full of energy, genuinely excited at the prospect of matching a good book with its owner. Robin wished he could summon up even half as much energy as her, but these days, his bones had started to creak, the gray flecks in his hair had turned into patches and he found himself out of breath with the mere prospect of a walk. Wrinkles had burrowed into his face in all the usual places and any spark of youth in his eyes had dimmed a long time ago.

Often he wondered if Samantha would even recognize him anymore—if she walked into their flat tomorrow, she would shriek at the sight of the old man sitting on the sofa. Sometimes that thought made him laugh; sometimes it made him cry.

“How’s it going?” Wren said, looking at the pile of books with delight. Robin shifted his body so the stack under the table wasn’t visible. He didn’t care about his own image—he just didn’t want Wren to feel bad. It wasn’t Wren’s fault that Without Her was a hard sell.

“It’s fine,” Robin said, not able to summon up a more positive adjective. His phone buzzed, and without looking away from Wren, he reached and declined the call.

“Right,” Wren said, her eyes flitting from him to the phone and back, losing some of her smile. “Well, if you need anything, you know where I am. I’ll try and direct some people over if they look the type.”