‘Yeah … English and Creative Writing. She showed me some of her pieces once. I wasn’t much of a judge, but I thought they were good. Really vivid, you know? And we had a whole pattern set up in our lives. This bread shop that we’d always go to. Stupidly expensive, neither of us could really afford it, but they did these pancakes that she couldn’t get enough of. And then, sometimes, we’d just take a bus across the city. Sit on the top deck, people-watch, make up all these stories about who we saw. Or make up more stories about ourselves, all this stuff we would do, all these places we would go. I keep remembering all these things about her. Like how, when she was annoyed, she’d push her tongue against her teeth … she had this gap in her front teeth and she’d push her tongue against that gap. We spent all this time together, I really thought I knew her. But now I realize, I never really met any of her friends. I never met her family, we never went to any of these places she kept talking about. So did I really not know a single thing about her? Can I really have been that stupid? When she knew every single damn thing about me.’

I glance across at him, sharply. A harsh note has crept into his voice. Bitterness … or something else? All of a sudden, I can’t quite read him and little hairs on my arms stand up.

‘It’s so hard,’ he goes on, ‘to give you a proper sense of her, Jenn, when you didn’t ever know her or meet her.’

You didn’t tell him, I think. Right at the start, you didn’t tell him, and how would it look now if he finds out you lied?

Alastair leans back now against the bench, looking so much more relaxed. He closes his eyes. ‘This is a nice park. What’s the name – Brockwell?’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘You’re lucky to have this on your doorstep. It took me a while to get used to all the hustle and bustle when I first came to London. How did you find it, coming from Brighton?’

I look across at him. ‘What?’

He sits up, opens his eyes again. ‘What?’

‘How did you know I grew up in Brighton?’

Alastair frowns. ‘You told me. When we first met. I thought you went to school there.’ He smiles. ‘Listen,’ he says. ‘I can see a café just up there. Will you let me buy you a tea, a coffee or something? To say thank you? I mean, it’s hardly anything in return, but can I?’ He has already got to his feet. He really does seem completely fine now.

I smile back at him, his figure a silhouette against the sunshine. ‘Sure,’ I say. ‘Tea, please. That would be great.’