‘No.’ Again, no sense of irritation or weariness in his tone. She would have been on the verge of concluding that he was a bit strange not to mind her weird phone calls out of the blue, but now she knew just a little bit more about him, she wondered if maybe he was lonely. That would explain things.

And she did know a bit about him now. She crossed dangerous and psychotic off her mental list and added some new qualities: patient, calm and… kind. Yes, despite his bluntness and offhand demeanour, he’d been very kind to listen to her.

However, it struck her that there was one important bit of information she didn’t have about him. ‘I don’t know your name.’

‘It’s Brody.’

That fitted the deep gravel of his voice, somehow. She tried to picture him and came up with salt-and-pepper hair, maybe a beard. She got the sense he was older than she was, but it was hard to tell from his voice alone. He also sounded weary, as if he’d lived through a lot.

‘Brody,’ she repeated quietly, and then, because her manners hadn’t deserted her completely, she added. ‘It’s very nice to meet you.’

He laughed then, a proper deep rumble. ‘Surprisingly, I’m going to say “likewise”.’

There was nothing much left to say now. The bomb was no longer ticking away inside her. He’d defused it cleanly and effortlessly while they’d been talking, and she hadn’t even noticed. No explosion was imminent.

So that was that, then. It was time to go. The only problem was she didn’t know how to end a conversation like this. ‘Well,’ she began but was quickly drowned out by the insistent barking of a dog in the background on the other end of the line.

‘Hang on a sec,’ Brody muttered, and she could hear him putting the phone down and moving away, then mumbling something along the lines of: ‘Calm down! It’s only an owl.’ A few moments later he was back, sounding marginally more ruffled than he usually did, which was kind of reassuring. ‘Sorry about that.’

‘It’s okay,’ Anna replied. It had made her smile. She liked dogs. She and Spencer had talked about getting one not long before he died but had decided it wasn’t the best timing as Anna had just come off the pill and they were going to start trying for a baby. Another thing that had been stolen from her. But she wasn’t going to think about that right now. ‘Anyway, I just wanted to say—’

More barking.

‘Lewis!’ he shouted. ‘Quiet.’

There was such authority in his tone that the dog instantly fell silent.

‘You have a dog called Lewis?’ Anna asked, her voice raspy.

She heard movement and faint panting, and then he said, ‘Daft animal’ under his breath and she could picture the dog sitting at his knee and looking up at him with complete adoration as he scratched it between its ears. ‘Yes,’ he replied.