He thought that was an end to it. He himself had completely forgotten it all. And then, seven years later, three days after Clio died, he’d been sleeping on Calvin’s couch when the phone tucked under the pillow blared at him, startling him into the morning light. It was difficult to make out what Gemma was saying at first, through the tears, the shuddering snotty breath. She’d taken Snoop out at six in the morning for his usual walk, the streets quiet, the same route they always took. Suddenly he’d broken his lead and run across the road (‘like he was possessed or something’) just at the point a speeding red sports car had rounded the corner.

‘And – and – and I was thinking, I was thinking, babe, what if this is Clio? What if it’s her curse? Finally happening, now that she’s dead?’

He got an Uber straight back home, wrapped his arms round her, told her over and over, there’s no curse, there’s no such thing as curses. They mourned their dog together, their previous divisions evaporated, any confusion he was feeling over Clio lost under this more immediate, more pressing grief. Gemma had got pregnant almost immediately afterwards, through two different modes of contraception, as though the huge wave of emotion Snoop left behind him had demanded something to fill it. Two weeks after they’d done the test and before they’d been able to let him know, Hamza’s father had a sudden heart attack, just sitting there at the breakfast table, unable to get his last words out to his wife.

Gemma kept herself small and quiet during this time, and Hamza tried, awkwardly, when he remembered, not to shutter himself off from her. She was paranoid about the baby from the start, wouldn’t let him fuck her even when all he needed was just to stretch out into his woman and roar and sublimate some of this loss into something physical. Nothing seemed calm any more, nothing he knew was the same. The dog’s basket still sat there in the hallway, its emptiness eyeing him sadly whenever he tried to leave the house.

Eventually, Gemma broke. He came in from his mum’s one afternoon to find her in tears at the table, having just been made redundant.

‘They can’t do that to a pregnant woman!’

‘Yeah, but they don’t know I’m pregnant, do they? Wasn’t going to tell them for three weeks yet.’

‘Fucksake, man. Who the hell is doing this to us?’

‘Listen, Za. Bear with me here. What if – what if Clio did curse us? What if there’s something in that after all?’

‘Gem. Come on. What, she just leaves us alone for seven years then only comes after us once she’s dead?’