‘You’ve got the face for it,’ his former guvnor always said when sending Donald out on a tough job. ‘Born to be a copper, you were.’ And Donald would swear and Harry would laugh and Donald would say one day soon he’d quit and Harry would tell him he’d never quit, it was in his bones and all of that was before Ellen was sick, before there was something in her bones, and Jesus Christ, surely he should be past this now? The sudden blindsiding memory boiled up out of his stomach and grabbed him by the throat, dragging him back into a past he still missed, still longed for. Damn it. Did it show in his face? He turned away from the doors so as not to frighten the people inside.

And he saw Ellen, getting off a bus.

It had been months since he’d seen her – maybe even as long as a year – and the shock was almost as sharp as the first time. Coming home from the cemetery, glancing out of the car window and there she was, bent down to talk to a scrappy terrier. The urge to yell No, don’t touch it – germs, remember? was so consuming he’d wound down the window before he could remind himself that was all in the past now, she was beyond infection control precautions, beyond all of it, and he closed the window and pulled over and stared at his wife until she saw him watching and her face dissolved into that of a stranger, suspicious and frightened of the strange man watching her over the steering wheel of his Mercedes. Back then, these glimpses of her had torn at his heart. Now he missed them and was grateful when they came to him.

He knew it was out of order to stare at strange women, but he watched anyway, wanting to hold onto the illusion. She wore the kind of outfit he associated with heavy linen napkins and long-stemmed glasses of chilled white wine; a beige trouser-suit, a white blouse, shiny pinky-beige heels that he thought vaguely might be described as nude. Her hair was pinned into a shining chignon.

He suddenly remembered his dream from the night before. He stood on the beach at night, watching Ava walking out of the water. Her hair hung down her back and her skin gleamed in the moonlight. He suspected he’d borrowed the image from Dr No. When he woke, aroused and unsettled, he felt as if he’d been unfaithful to Ellen.

Was that why he was seeing Ellen now? Had she come back to warn him? That was ridiculous. He had no interest in Ava. She was on his mind because of the whole beach hut situation, because of what he’d come here to do. Ellen was walking away from him now, towards the town centre. If she knew why he was here, would she disapprove? Surely not. She’d liked things to be tidy and orderly. She would never have taken off with her brother to live in a beach hut. A man with a dog blocked his view, and then a horde of teens. Ellen was out of sight.