Craig glimpsed figures rushing into the building. A familiar voice shouted, ‘Hold on!’

All he could do was pluck at the peeling wooden frame with his fingers. But then Ian was prising them away. One of Craig’s fingers was wrenched back sharply – and his body shrieked with pain.

‘Let go!’ Ian whispered.

Craig took an elbow hard in the nose and his head snapped back, his vision exploded into static. One hand was forced off the frame, and Ian turned his attention to Craig’s other hand, wrenching at the fingers.

Nnnnnn Nnnnnn. Nnn.

‘You’re nearly there,’ Ian hissed urgently. ‘Just let go now.’

The last fingers lost purchase on the wood.

Craig felt as if he were suspended in space for a split second as the small of his back pivoted on the edge of the window frame – he sensed the door in the room crashing open – and he tipped backwards.

And fell.

53

When Sasha drove past, she saw him sitting in the window of the café. She parked up and stomped across the road, holding up her hands as if to say, what the hell, Kev.

But he didn’t react, didn’t look embarrassed or defensive or even angry; he blankly watched her yank open the door. When Sasha charged inside, the lady behind the counter gave her a sympathetic smile, as if she was a harassed mum picking up a child late from school.

‘What’s going on, Kev?’ she asked him.

But Kev looked a ghost of the big-hearted, exuberant man she’d married, the man with whom she had shared some of the greatest experiences of her life, and the worst. She dropped into the chair opposite him.

‘Talk to me,’ she urged him, but he just gazed out of the window, watching the world go by. At the cars zooming past, the dribble of surf climbing the narrow pebble beach and receding, and the tourists walking the coast road towards Chalkwell, beneath the blue, blue sky. His silence was exhausting, and she’d had enough of it.

‘Kev…’ she began, but a waitress appeared and asked if she wanted anything.

Impatient for her to leave, Sasha smiled. ‘Not for me, thank you.’

‘What about you, Kev, another one?’ The woman picked up his empty mug but he shook his head.

Sasha moved aside the ketchup, salt and pepper, and the laminated menu that sat between them like a barrier.

‘So,’ she snapped, ‘do you want to tell me what’s going on?’

He shrugged. ‘I wasn’t enjoying the work any more, not really, so I quit. But I was too embarrassed to tell you, and I didn’t want you to worry. I got myself into a bit of a situation where I was leaving the house every morning and pretending to go to work.’