On Saturday morning Chris opened his door to two police officers, fluorescent against the rain-soaked steps leading down to his flat.

He’d been sure it would be them as soon as he’d heard the brisk trill of his doorbell while he’d been failing to eat a slice of toast. He’d just sat there at first, swirling patterns in the cremated crumbs, until he’d heard Vicky moving around in their bedroom and had leaped up to beat her to the door.

“Mr. Watson?”

“Last time I checked.” He found himself speaking in the jovial tone he used for plumbers and electricians, which disguised his discomfort at being a homeowner, a bona fide member of suburbia. Somehow he always felt as though he was faking.

He tensed when Vicky’s voice sailed from the rear of the flat: “Who is it?”

“One moment . . .” he said to the police, abandoning them on his doorstep and hurrying back down their hall. “Just a student!” he called to Vicky, once he was out of the officers’ earshot.

He hoped that would appease her, but she appeared in the doorway of their bedroom. Chris put a hand on her shoulder to stop her getting any further. She looked startled—he’d grabbed her too hard. He loosened his hold and tried to smile. “What shift are you on today?”

“You never remember.” At one time she would have said this affectionately, but now it came out toneless. “I’m just doing eight till one to cover a gap. Should be back for lunch at Di’s. I’ll meet you there.”

She checked the watch clipped to the front of her tunic, and Chris remembered how it used to amuse him, for some reason, even though he knew it was part of a standard nurse’s uniform. A fob watch seemed so stuffy and old-fashioned, so un-Vicky. Lots of things about her nurse’s kit used to strike him as funny. The Bristol Stool Chart she often carried around with her, not least.

Glancing past her, he saw three new glossy magazines heaped up on their bed. Vicky wasn’t a celebrity-gossip kind of woman, but she had a thing about snipping pictures out of magazines, keeping them in the drawer of her dressing table, like tokens. He’d asked her about it once and she’d got defensive, saying he wouldn’t understand.

Maybe he would, though, if she gave him a chance. When had they stopped acknowledging the things that had first drawn them together? The confidences they’d whispered as they’d squashed into her single bed in her grotty student dorm, giggling and clinging to one another as they’d wriggled around trying to get comfy.