‘You don’t get to fall in love with shards of me, like everyone else.’ The words rushed out of Miranda, flooding from nowhere. ‘You can’t choose the pieces of me to love, Tom.’

‘I don’t . . .’ Tom looked up. There were lines across his face, lines she had never noticed before. ‘Do you love me, Miranda?’ The words startled her.

‘Yes,’ she said. A long pause. ‘Of course I do.’

The words crept around the kitchen.

‘Do you though? Really?’

‘Why do you want this so much?’ Miranda spoke quietly. ‘This is who I am, Tom. Why can’t I be enough?’

‘You are.’ He said the words as if by rote. ‘Of course you are.’

‘Well then.’

‘But . . .’ He leaned against the kitchen counter. ‘Is it just going to be us, like this? Just the two of us? For ever?’

‘You always knew,’ she said. ‘About my job.’

‘Did I?’

She thought back to those early first days, a lifetime ago at university. The dawn after the balls. The cobbles, and the bubbles, and the striped lawns rolling to the river.

It was the kindness: that was what she remembered. Tea in bed in the morning, and supper waiting after a long day in the library. Learning to be normal, as if practising her timetables.

And she had learned kindness, too. For a while, by rote. Even enjoyed those little gestures: running him a bath after an icy game of rugby, buying cough mixture when he had a cold.

Oh, bugger, I’ve forgotten my mother’s birthday.

Don’t worry darling, I’ve sent flowers from us.

Us.

So close to normal, happy, contented. So close to a sensible job, well-behaved children, a decent pension.

And neither of them realised when she took that first job. He had made her a packed lunch that first morning. Her favourite sandwiches – expensive ham and that smelly cheese – and coffee in a brand-new thermos, bought specially. A note: You’ll be brilliant.

The first step into a world with no value on kindness. Bad luck, really. Too easy to slip into old ways.

‘No,’ Miranda admitted. ‘Maybe you didn’t know then. But you’ve known for years, Tom. That everything I love about my job, it disappears, with . . .’

‘But it’s just’ – he was plaintive – ‘a job.’

Miranda thought of Casey, out in the chaos of Bangladesh. Of Hessa, battling not to cry.

‘It’s not,’ she said. ‘It’s not just a job.’

‘But it is.’

‘Why?’ She was standing now, meeting his eyes, and the growing rage. ‘Why isn’t this enough?’

‘You’re never bloody here, Miranda.’

‘I am.’ Her voice rose. ‘I haven’t been anywhere for weeks. I’ve been crushed into this house, saying no to everything.’

No.

Not yet.

‘In your head, you’re a thousand miles away.’

‘But I’m not,’ Miranda heard herself almost scream. ‘I’m here. And I should be in Bangladesh, right now.’