Midnight was always my weak point. It seemed to be hardwired into my brain that if I wasn’t asleep then, I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I lay curled up in bed and reached under my pillow for my phone. I searched through my photos and found some of Tom throughout the years. I still reacted to those early shots, where he and I would be arm in arm and he’d be smiling at me as though he loved me. He had loved me; I knew he had. But then the later photos—there were fewer of them—they were different. There were stress lines on his face and it was clear he was unhappy. I wondered whether he’d been the same with Belinda, whether he’d grown more intolerant as time went on. I’d noticed the way she avoided him even now, years after they were together. Even in the early days she’d always had Josh ready and waiting, coat on, so that he could run out to Tom’s car. I had thought she was just good at timekeeping; it was only now that I thought there might have been other reasons behind that. He was always so nice to me then, and I didn’t think for a moment that he might have been to blame in his marriage to her. I shut down that folder. I didn’t want to think about that, especially not late at night.

Then I searched online for a photo of Harry and found one in a local business magazine. The photo was taken when Sheridan’s first opened. It was a few years before I met him, but he hadn’t changed too much. He looked out at the camera, little realizing that one day in the future a woman would call up this photo in the privacy of a grotty rented flat and lie in bed crying at the sight of him.

I reached out to my bedside cabinet. In the bottom drawer was a silk scarf that Harry had bought me. It had an abstract design in bright blues and pinks, and I loved it. My phone lit up that corner of the room and all I could see was the scarf and Harry’s face on the screen.

Harry had bought me the scarf in Paris, the weekend we decided to live together. We were walking through the city late on Saturday afternoon, looking for a restaurant that was far enough away from the conference center, so that we wouldn’t bump into any of the other delegates. A row of silk scarves was on display in the window of a tiny boutique and we stopped to look at them. He stood behind me, really close. Every nerve in my body was awakened and he leaned forward and brushed my hair to one side and kissed my neck.