He turns back to her, a smile spreading over one half of his mouth and then the other, a lopsided half-knowing grin, and says, ‘Nope. You?’

‘Tom,’ the owner of the café calls out, looking over to Cathy’s table. ‘The usual?’

‘Please. To go,’ Tom says, turning away from her again.

Cathy finds herself downing her Americano faster. She has to get back to work, after all.

She times her stand just as he touches his contactless card to the machine. And then they’re walking out together into the rain. He’s holding a reuseable cup, his weight on one hip again. Her work uniform is getting wet. What is she doing, having rushed her coffee break to walk out with him? She’s always the one doing the chasing. But she can feel the heat off his body, even here, standing outside in the rain together.

‘You work at the vets’?’ he says, gesturing with his coffee to her tunic, pulling up the hood of his parka with the other hand.

‘Yeah.’ Cathy looks past his shoulder, to the vets’. Joe and Frannie emerge together. Cathy absent-mindedly checks her watch. Joe is supposed to be in afternoon surgery. And Frannie is supposed to be on reception. Where are they going? She keeps looking. Something about their body language is self-conscious, sheepish, maybe. They walk down the road together, to where Cathy can’t imagine.

‘You a vet, or –’ Tom says.

‘Sorry,’ Cathy says. She points to them. ‘That’s my brother and sister.’

‘You work together?’

‘Mmm,’ she says, still looking. Still thinking. Still thinking about Frannie’s lawyer, about Joe’s name on the warrant, at how alone she suddenly feels in the family, as though they’re holding her over a sheer drop, and she has to rely on them not to let go.

‘Pretty rainy for a walk,’ Tom remarks, watching them too.

She turns her gaze back to him. ‘You’re getting so wet.’ She looks at his jeans, already dark in places from the rain.

He shrugs, a big clumsy shrug, like he just doesn’t give a fuck about anything and Cathy, who gives far too many fucks about absolutely everything, moves to him like a flower to the sun.

‘Yes, I’m a vet,’ Cathy says, answering his question with flaming cheeks.

‘Oh, lovely!’ Tom says. The rain is battering both of them, and Tom starts laughing again. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he says. ‘It’s not Verona, is it?’ But he still stands there, smiling down at her.

‘No, it’s not,’ she says.

‘Should we …’ he says. Cathy waits, wondering if he might feel it too. She stands there, hesitating as droplets track down her neck, looking at his take-out coffee. Their eyes meet. ‘You want to – go somewhere less wet?’ Tom says. ‘Share my coffee? Or buy another?’ He shrugs, another big shrug.

Cathy became shy when she was twelve. It started with glandular fever. The day before it, she had played hockey, then gone to a café, then come home and tidied her room. Unlimited energy, which she spent however she wanted. She stayed up late. She kissed boys. She finished essays at the eleventh hour and played sports to destress afterwards.