The first time Matty loses it when she’s pregnant – she’s nine weeks in – she sees him raise both hands to grab her upper arms and says quickly and instinctively, ‘Sorry, sorry …’ because she knows of course he’d never do anything when she’s carrying his baby, it’s just a reflex. She tells herself that she’ll address it another time – she’s got so much on her plate at the moment, it’s easier just to keep the peace – and, in the back of her mind, she can’t help thinking, she’s had one failed relationship already, does she really want to end up single with two kids by different men in her mid-twenties? Matty is so great so much of the time, she really wants to make this work. The water gets hot very gradually, and as far as the frog is concerned, there is no one point where it gets dramatically different or bad enough to jump out.

*

All that is still to come. For now, Shelley is sitting in a curry house on a Friday night. Her daughter is happy at her dad’s place with him and his new girlfriend, and a man that Shelley really fancies, a doctor no less, is sitting opposite her and being very attentive. Even after she’s put her knife and fork together on the plate and sat back on the banquette, he tells her to finish the sag aloo at least. She spends her whole life looking after a child all on her own: there’s something so sweet about someone noticing how much she has eaten and caring whether it has been enough. When he asks what went wrong with her relationship with Estella’s dad, she’s only too happy to tell him the whole story.

He leans forward, watching her face as she talks. At one point, he reaches out with a napkin and, as she is speaking, wipes a small amount of orange sauce from her lower lip. She stops talking and their gazes meet. His motion is slow but firm, distorting her lip a little, and her eyes are wide and wondering. In her heart of hearts, she knows she’s a little out of her depth here but she’s excited by that too. The water isn’t hot yet, after all, just alluringly warm, and she’s never met anyone like Matthew Goodison in her life.

*