‘I’m not exactly a success. A network security manager for a medium-sized IT business.’ His voice took on a sarcastic edge. ‘It’s every young lad’s dream, isn’t it? Not.’

‘You protect people and the things that are important to them.’

‘I protect data. Not really the same thing.’

‘Yes, but what’s that saying? Life’s a journey, isn’t it? Not a destination.’

‘Christ.’ He laughed. ‘You must be pissed too if you’re quoting Aerosmith lyrics at me.’

‘I think it was Ralph Waldo Emerson, actually. But you know what I mean.’

‘Feel like I’ve spent the whole of my thirties doing, I don’t know . . .’ He held his hands up in the air. ‘I don’t know what I’ve been doing. And now they’re gone forever and before we know it, in another couple of years Lucy will be out of the door to university. Even though—’

‘Do you think she’s all right?’

‘Who?’

‘Lucy.’

He hesitated, and I felt his arm stiffen slightly against mine.

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘What makes you say that?’

I paused and slowed our pace, to let the others get a little further ahead.

‘She just seems . . . not really herself recently. Quieter than usual, but more snappy.’

‘I don’t think she can be quieter and more snappy at the same time, love.’

‘You know what I mean. She seems more distracted than normal, on her phone all the time.’

‘She’s always on her phone. It’s compulsory for generation Z, or whatever they’re called.’

‘She’s worried about her GCSEs, I suppose.’

He paused, seeming to consider this for a moment.

‘Makes sense.’

‘Even though she’s predicted stellar grades in everything?’

‘She’s always been a bit highly strung – and you know what teenagers can be like.’ He shook his head suddenly and picked up the thread of our earlier conversation. ‘Christ, it only feels like five minutes ago that I was bringing her home from the hospital in her baby seat and changing my first nappy. Now I’m knocking on forty and I’m losing my bloody hair and it feels like, What the hell just happened?’

‘I don’t care about your hair, Sean.’

‘Every day I look in the mirror and it’s creeping further and further up my bloody head. You know, the other week I was in town and I caught sight of this old feller’s reflection in a shop window and I thought, Who’s that old bastard? He’s definitely trying too hard. Then I realised it was me. Jesus.’

‘What are you trying to say?’

‘I . . . I don’t know. Too many beers, that’s all. Rowan’s done amazingly well, though, hasn’t she?’

I pulled my arm from his, a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach.

‘She has,’ I said quietly. ‘Yes, she has.’