And here she was, thinking again, when she’d deliberately been trying to do anything but.

Anna sighed and felt her warm breath reflected back to her by the duvet cover. She lay there for ten more minutes before she flipped it back and stared at the ceiling. The second day of January was as grey and heavy as she felt, and she could just about make out the reflected shape of her sash windows on the painted plaster above her head.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see her phone lying on the bedside table. She itched to reach out and pick it up, to dial the one source of comfort she’d found when things were dark and bleak, but that was impossible now, wasn’t it? Pain and comfort had been rolled into one convenient package.

It seemed like a lifetime since she’d last talked to him. Not fourteen hours and twenty-five minutes… No!

Not those numbers. Those were the wrong numbers.

Anna threw the duvet off and got out of bed, something driving her. She found herself in front of Spencer’s wardrobe and opened the doors, but there was no row of soothing shirts inside, only a higgledy-piggledy pile of ugly black sacks.

She pulled out the top one and rested it on the bed, then she plunged her fingernail into the stretchy black plastic, tearing the hole she’d made in the early hours of New Year’s Day wider. It was very satisfying. She hooked both hands on either side of the rip and pulled outwards. Spencer’s shirts, which had been neatly folded and stacked, spilled onto the floor.

One at a time, she picked them up and returned them to their hangers, smoothing out the creases on the shoulders as she went. And then she disembowelled bag after bag, returning their innards to their proper places, until everything was right and neat and exactly the way it had been before – three years, nine months and ten days ago.

BRODY’S PHONE LAY in its new home on the kitchen counter. He glanced at it as he walked past. The screen was black and empty. When he’d got it, he’d thought of it as being a piece of equipment that would allow him to contact the outside world. It hadn’t occurred to him – or mattered – if any communication could come back the other way. Now it was all he could think about.

In the past week, he’d called her a handful of times, not wanting to be too pushy. She hadn’t replied. He’d described Anna as brave, amazing, kind… But now he knew he could add ‘stubborn’ to that list. If he hadn’t been feeling so dull and empty inside, he might have laughed about that. This level of pig-headedness made them the perfect match. But he wasn’t finding it very funny at present. Not at all.

Brody thought for a moment, then turned and headed for his study. He hadn’t been in this room much this past week. Every time he sat in that old armchair it only made it seem all the more glaring that his phone remained silent, so he’d just stopped sitting there. He didn’t want to be that guy. Watching, waiting. Pining.