“Course you can. It’s easy. People leave each other all the time. Well, people leave me all the time, anyway. Maybe I’m just inherently quite leave-able.”

“You’re lovely.”

“I can’t be or they wouldn’t keep leaving. It goes all right for a few months, then I get boring or something.”

“I’m sorry it didn’t work out with Claire.”

“Claire?”

“Do I mean Claire?”

Finn closed his eyes and thought. “Well, the most recent girl to leave me was Helen, but there was probably a Claire in there somewhere – oh, yes, Claire. She got mad because I wanted to go to the knob museum in Iceland.” Ava laughed so loudly it echoed off the walls. “Ava, can I ask something? Why don’t you and Paul have children?”

“Wow.”

“Okay, bad question.”

“No, it’s a good question. I just don’t really know the answer.”

“You do know where they come from though, right? Because I can get you a book or something. I owe you a Christmas present.”

Ava closed her eyes and leaned back against the pillar.

“I’ve got a story for you,” Finn said.

“I’m listening.”

“It’s about a woman who went for a walk in a dark wood, and met a witch.”

“How did she know she was a witch?”

“How did the woman know? Or how did the witch know?”

“Too jetlagged to understand. Do both.”

“Okay. The woman knew because the witch lived in a beautiful caravan, and on the wall of the caravan there was a certificate with a massive great red wax seal that said, Certified Witch. And the witch knew because she’d worked hard for years, taking crappy jobs and studying so she could get qualified.”

“Why was the woman in the woods in the first place?”

“She was having a difficult time and she needed to be by herself for a while. So she wasn’t all that pleased when she saw the witch’s caravan. But the witch smiled at her and said, Come inside and we’ll talk, and because it was a witch asking, she had to do it. So she went inside and sat down at the table.”

Ava shifted against the pillar to get comfortable.

“The witch had a crystal ball and a deck of tarot cards and a magnifying glass for looking at palms. She took one look at the woman and knew she wouldn’t need any of it. But she got the crystal ball out anyway, because it’s nice to put on a good show.

“So she took the purple silk cover off the crystal ball, and looked into it, and hummed for a while. The woman sat and looked round the caravan and enjoyed the peace and quiet. And she thought, Actually, this is quite a nice place to live. Not too much to clean. Plenty of storage. You can up sticks and move whenever you want.

“The witch said, ‘You’re at a crossroads in your life.’

“The woman looked at the wooden walls and thought, Bet it’s cold in the winter. And she thought about her central heating. Then she looked at the wood-burning stove and thought, On the other hand…