I stare down at him. He’s right, of course he is. His hand on my arm is so strong, so warm. I’m involved in this now. I can’t just run away when it’s painful or uncomfortable. I have to stick with it. My spine aches as I sit back down again, the chair legs scraping on the hard canteen floor.

I breathe out, curling my hands round the edges of my seat, holding myself steady. ‘So what happened?’ I ask. I make my voice as even as possible. ‘What happened between you?’

‘I asked if I could meet her parents. She’d met mine by then and they liked her. Really liked her. It seemed like a natural thing to suggest. We’d been together over nine months by then. I was serious about her. I’d thought she was serious about me. But her parents …’ He gives me a wry smile. ‘It all went downhill after that.’

There’s a reason. There is always a reason.

‘After a week and a half,’ Alastair goes on, ‘she sent me an email.’ He draws in a deep breath and I copy him, realizing how empty my own lungs are. ‘She broke up with me in the email. No proper reason. She just wrote, I can’t see you any more. I tried to email her back. I wanted her to explain. But my email bounced back. She never replied. I couldn’t get hold of her at all. She’d changed her mobile number and closed her email account. Or else she was simply blocking me. So no, we didn’t keep in touch.’

His words sit heavily in the silence between us, and I feel echoes of the emotions he must have had back then. Everyone carries wounds, I realize. Everyone gets things wrong. But not like you have, a little voice whispers. Not like you, because yours wasn’t a mistake.

‘I’m sorry,’ I manage to say to Alastair. ‘I’m so sorry it happened like that.’

Our drinks are barely lukewarm by now.

‘I did get another email though,’ he says, ‘two months later. I didn’t recognize the account it was sent from and it only had two words in it: I’m sorry. I think it was probably from her. It helped to tell myself that it was, anyway, but I’ll never know for sure. I tried to forget about it, move on. After a while, I think I forgave her, mostly. She must have had her reasons, even if she couldn’t find a way to tell me.’

I think of the funeral, all those empty seats. The parents who simply never showed up.

On the table, our paper cups rest a few inches from each other. I have a vision of reaching out to touch him. Maybe I’d touch the back of his hand. Maybe I’d put my whole hand in his. The thought of it makes me feel dizzier than ever. When did anyone but Charlie last touch me?