Irene had a shower and, while she was waiting for Luke, dozed off on the firm bed, wrapped in the thin towel and with the starched bolster under her head. She dreamt she was at home again with Adrian and the girls; nothing happened in the dream, she was simply sitting at the table in the kitchen and living the life that she had once had. When she woke with a jerk, she couldn’t remember where she was; she looked up at the flick of the fan’s blades and waited. Even when memory returned, filling up the blank attics in her head, it felt unreal. The dream of the familiar past, and the oddity of the present, scrambled together in her tired mind. She stared dazedly at Luke, sitting naked at the bottom of the bed, towelling himself dry.

‘Sleep some more, if you want,’ he said. ‘It’s still quite early – we don’t need to eat at once.’

‘If I sleep now, I’ll be awake all night.’

She sat up and stretched, letting the towel slip from her body. She felt his eyes on her and smiled and held out her arms.

They ate soup that tasted of cabbage, then fish that tasted of chicken. The brie was rubbery and the wine sharp. They barely spoke, although their knees touched under the small table that separated them, their hands met. They didn’t talk because there was no need any more. They were in each other’s past now, a few days of summer. Tomorrow, they would take their different roads. They wouldn’t meet again. He would go to America, where he would think about Mary and lose himself in the clouds; she would return to her daughters and she would pick up her life where she’d abandoned it just two weeks ago. Because there aren’t really endings, she almost said out loud. You just go on as best you can. That’s all.

In the darkness, they held each other. She could make out the glow of his open eyes. Very quiet, very slow, very kind. The fan clicked past. The watch on his wrist ticked in her ear. Two strangers, saying goodbye.

At half past five, she woke. A cock was crowing somewhere, and between the half-open shutters, over the gables of the roof, the day was beginning to brighten. She lay for a while listening to the sound of Luke’s breathing. He murmured something and shifted, clamping a forearm over his eyes to keep out traces of light. She’d read in a book that when you share a bed with someone, you change positions at the same time as each other through the night. She’d always found it strange and touching to think of the hours she and Adrian had spent, unconscious and yet together – alone in the grip of their dreams, and yet hands, legs, bodies touching each other, consoling each other.