At some point, the pub had almost emptied. It was another thing she’d liked about the place the handful of times she’d been: the way a proportion of the customers would abruptly leave en masse, presumably all catching the same train. Then there’d be another influx, but hardly anybody would stay for more than a couple of drinks. The transience was refreshing. So different from the bars she and Luke used to go to with their friends at weekends, where everybody knew one another, and the nights would follow a well-worn pattern. She had loved that at the time, of course. In the aftershock of separation, she’d grieved for the routines of their life almost as much as for him.

“I don’t really want to talk about it,” she told the barman. “Thanks, though.”

But he continued to hover, drying glasses with a squeaky cloth, the quiet of the pub beginning to feel like a loaded pause in a conversation.

“Work?” he prompted, and she nodded. “What do you do?”

“I’m head of counseling services at the uni. I used to be a student counselor but now I run the department and it’s . . .”

“Tough, I’d imagine.”

“Yep.” Joanna’s eyes fuzzed with tears. That poor student, whose name she’d spoken and written and read countless times today. The student they’d almost failed—except they really meant her, Joanna, because she was in charge, it was her responsibility. And almost wasn’t accurate either, because the young man had been failed, even though he was alive.

Joanna had only ever wanted to help students cope with the stresses of university. Of struggling to fit in, keep up, keep going. Being a counselor had been hard at times too, but every day she had felt she’d achieved something, listened to someone. Since her promotion, she’d barely spoken to a student in weeks. Her job had become a treadmill of meetings and spreadsheets and frustrations. There was never enough money or staff; there were always too many students in need. How had she never realized how much strain their services were under as she’d sat in a little pod with tissues and privacy blinds, focusing on each individual without panicking that there were a hundred more on a waiting list?

All she did now was think about that waiting list.

“A student who should’ve had a counseling appointment weeks ago”—Joanna tried to swallow her tears along with another gulp of rum—“attempted to . . .” She stopped before it all avalanched out; she could lose her job for disclosing it to a stranger in a pub. “Sorry, I can’t actually tell you.”

The barman’s smile had faded now. “Sounds like you’ve got a lot on your plate,” he said, letting her off the hook of explaining fully.