‘I know.’

He looks at me. ‘Nothing’s changed. I’m Will, Maggie. I haven’t been Calum since I was three years old.’

‘Everything’s changed,’ I whisper.

He moves closer to the doorway, and I grip hold of it tighter.

‘Please don’t go.’ His voice is low. ‘Please don’t leave.’

And then he isn’t just touching me, he’s kissing me. He’s holding me so tight that my chest remembers how to hurt. And all of it feels unchanged, undamaged, and so, so right that I can’t bear it. I can’t survive it.

‘No. Will, stop!’ And the sheer panic in my voice makes him let go of me straightaway.

I wrap my arms around my torso. My throat throbs and my eyes sting. I can feel my flimsy defences start to crack. The pain that’s waiting behind their thin walls and towers. ‘I can’t do this if you touch me.’

‘Then don’t do this. Stay.’

‘I can’t, Will. I can’t.’

‘Then I’ll come with you. We can build a life together somewhere. Anywhere else.’

I’m shaking my head before he’s even stopped speaking because it sounds so tempting. So possible. ‘This is your home.’

His smile is bitter. There are tears in his eyes. ‘Don’t you get it, Maggie? You are my home.’

And it takes what little reserves I have left not to go to him, to comfort him, to comfort me. But I don’t. Because I know that I will never ever be able to do this – say this – again.

‘I don’t expect you to understand. But this is the right thing. For both of us.’

Because I’d rather he hated me for the rest of our lives than burden him with knowing why. What I know – what I can barely accept – is too new, too raw. But it’s also never going to change. His father; the word runs through my mind like a train on a circular track. It doesn’t matter that I don’t remember it, it doesn’t matter that I love him now only as Will, the man I thought I’d spend the rest of my life with. It doesn’t even matter that soulmates the world over were doubtless once something else to each other too: a brother, a mother, a son. It will still be true. And I can never unknow it.

When he starts shaking his head and closes that last remaining space between us, I hold up my hands. ‘I need to go. This isn’t my home. This isn’t my life. I need to find out what is. And I can only do that on my own. Please.’ And I try to make myself mean it – to at least sound like I mean it. That this is what I want. ‘Please. Just let me go.’

And maybe he sees something in my eyes then. The determination, the resolve. Because he bows his head and closes his eyes.

‘When are you going?’ He wipes impatient fingers across his cheeks and they come away wet.