‘Just move in with me,’ he’d remembered urging her, when it had happened, anxious to find a practical solution even if secretly he was thankful that she’d kept on putting it off, never fully unpacking her bags from the hall cupboard or bringing round the two boxes she kept mentioning were at her friend’s place. Things were already frazzled at that point; his memories of the two of them in that shit flat the guy from his label had found him were of the fights, the pressure-cooker atmosphere at first powering the spirit of Halfboi but then exhausting him when it came to the recording sessions. She was drowning in that fucking court case with the sleazy copper, her voice snapping and clipped at the tiniest domestic request, and when it broke in the papers he was relieved when she suggested moving out to a friend’s for a while, just to help keep his profile low. The label were keen for him to appear single, were talking about his crossover potential – he didn’t need a bunch of paps or whatever clocking him as a part of some big scandal. Not just as the album was about to drop.

‘Well, I’m seeing someone, yeah. But not, you know. It’s casual. We don’t live together. She’s a bit older, she knows the score. We’re all about the downlow.’

And the publicist had nodded, said that’s fab, that’s fab, as long as she doesn’t mind, because I think we can really work with something here; I’m sure she’ll understand. Her assistant, Gemma, had smiled at him, and he’d met the smile right back, come out of the meeting feeling both lighter and heavier than he had in a while.

Clio’s door opened and a black woman in a cleaning uniform let herself out, gave him a funny look. He moved back on around the corner, pushed open the door to the bakery-formerly-known-as-the-Shish and was chuffed to realise it was still the same heavy door a bit too big for the frame, just tarted up with a new coat of paint. He queued up at the counter they’d installed where the entry to the kitchen had been, tried to find his bearings. He remembered Clio sitting at a table up against the far wall, so once he’d ordered a focaccia sandwich and a flat white, ground a fist into his pocket at the brief confusion on the hostile waitress’s face that he knew how to pronounce ‘focaccia’ properly, smiled beatifically and secured the WiFi password, he slid himself down at the bench closest to where table 5 had been, pressed his shoulder up against the plaster. As if he could make himself time travel just by proximity. Fucking idiot. What you playing at? Here, today.