Jamal can hear her moving around in the bathroom next morning. Would she want him in her home in the cold light of day? Would she worry about him being alone in her flat while she was at work? Layla, who trusted him with her getting-the-fuck-out-of-Brackenham money back when they were fifteen? She’d been planning to run away all the years he had known her, yet here she is, in the same neighbourhood.

She walks into the living room dressed for work. Jamal’s never been impressed with suits, until he sees Layla in one. She’s been avoiding him ever since he arrived last night. Avoiding the inevitable. Layla and he are unfinished business.

‘Can we talk?’ he asks, but she’s disappeared into her study.

‘I can’t find my keys,’ she calls.

He assumes that means a big fat no to the sort of talk he wants to have.

In the kitchenette he puts on the kettle. ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’ he asks when she comes in.

She puts her briefcase on the table, which he takes as a yes.

‘I was wondering if I could use your computer today. Thought I’d get on Facebook.’

‘You? On Facebook?’

He likes that she knows he’s not on Facebook. Perhaps she’s searched him out over the years.

‘Just trying to find a way to let Violette know I’m here,’ he says.

She stares at him a moment, then rummages through her bag, grabs her phone and dials.

‘Oh sorry, Gigi. Meant to ring your mum. Can you just let her know that Jimmy Sarraf staying here is a bit hush-hush?’

She hangs up with a sort of smug victorious expression.

‘It’s not really hush-hush,’ he says. ‘Joss knows I’m here, so that means your mother knows, and if your mother knows . . .’

‘Yes, but my mother isn’t in secret contact with Violette. Gigi is. This is quicker.’

She bristled a bit when he mentioned her mother.

‘And my mother doesn’t gossip as much as she used to.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Ortley joined Facebook,’ she tells him. ‘He’ll want to be your friend. You’ll get a request every day.’

‘Doubt it. But I made a list of Violette’s pseudonyms. It’s unlikely she’s on Facebook, but if she is I know I’ll find her.’

‘Violette has pseudonyms?’

‘Yeah, like Lette Le-Hyphen.’

She smiles for the first time since he arrived. It’s a good one, Layla Bayat’s smile. Always was. It promised things.

‘Niece of James Hyphen-Hyphen?’ she asks.

‘Affable chap – bit dashing, really.’

She laughs this time. Accents had become Etienne and Jamal’s thing when Etienne appeared on the scene. That was when James Hyphen-Hyphen came into being. Noor would roll her eyes and remark on her husband’s maturity being comparable with that of her little brother’s. But she’d be laughing. In their repertoire, there were the Rothfuss-Joneses and the Franklin-Mays and the Atkinson-Hills and the Fuckety-Fucks. The hyphen joke got old, but a couple of years back, when Jamal told Violette about it, she had to have her own, and Lette Le-Hyphen was born.