She went upstairs and packed his clothes into suitcases.

She checked her schedule, saw that she had a midday meeting to discuss the latest flight routes, and was booked into the control room on the 2–7 shift. Fine. She’d travel in early, have time for a coffee and sandwich in her favourite cafe. Her life was going to be just fine.

But she didn’t know how to wipe a hard drive.

That was OK. How difficult could it possibly be?

She went upstairs, clicked on the computer to wake it up, and searched: how to wipe a hard drive.

The computer told her how to wipe a hard drive.

Calmly, she wiped the hard drive.

She didn’t think it was anger that made her do it. It was simply the right thing to do. The information was confidential – personal, private and rightly so – and clearly James was having a breakdown that he would later regret. She’d just saved him from doing some irrevocable damage.

Then she went to the kitchen to make herself a cup of coffee. Toast, butter, jam. And she did not think, not for a second, about the irrevocable damage that James had done to her, to their family, or how it had – in one brutal swipe – changed everything.

When Eva woke up there was the strangest sound in her home – unsettling, haunting, but absolutely right at the same time. It took her a moment, in her half-sleep, to place it. It was not a CD, it was not the radio. Someone was playing her piano.

It was a tune she didn’t know. It was melodic. They had a touch on the keys that was firmer than hers, a heavy tread on the pedal, but there was depth too. It had been so long that for a moment she could hardly believe it. Piotr was playing her piano.

As she reached for the glass of water beside her bed, caught a glimpse of the sky, like layers of oil paint, she realised that he was doing more than playing. He was composing. He could never remember how to play the notes of others without sheet music, but he could do something better, something she’d never been able to even though she played better than him. She couldn’t deny it; he was creating something beautiful. There was emotion in the way his notes fled from one another, a deep sort of ache in the sustained bass. She closed her eyes, imagined that she could touch her hands, briefly, on his shoulders while he played. But no.

They had a meeting to get to. Besides, she’d let him stay the night – on the sofa downstairs – and that was quite enough. She got up, pulled on her jeans, chose a purple shirt, a jumper, and stood at the top of the stairs.