‘I’ve got to run. I’m due in court at ten. Great to see you, Emad! I’m sure we’ll bump into each other again, now you’re based here too. It’ll be good to have an ally here.’

She clapped him affectionately on the shoulder and bounded down the steps, waving over her head at him without looking back.

Emad carried on into the station, his heart pounding with pleasure. He was already insanely proud to be a police officer. And now the job had just got a whole lot more appealing.

They did not cross paths again for another week, even though Emad’s eyes were out on stalks, looking for Gemma’s curly blonde hair in every corridor. Perhaps she’d been tied up with her court case, he thought, and anyway he was kept busy out on calls and arrests, buddied up with more senior officers while he was still on probation. He asked around after her, just casually, saying how she was an old schoolfriend and he’d heard she worked here; but nobody else had heard of her – it was a big station.

Then, one Thursday morning he was making a tray of teas in the third-floor kitchenette when he felt soft hands cover his eyes. ‘Guess who?’ she said, and he smelled something floral and sensual in his nostrils.

‘Hi!’ He turned and grinned at her, then nodded at the eight mugs in front of him. ‘You can tell I’m the newbie, eh?’

Gemma laughed. She looked even more gorgeous today, he thought, the dark shadows under her eyes a little less pronounced.

She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

‘We’ve all been there,’ she said. ‘Rite of passage…’

‘I’m an expert already.’ Emad busied himself pouring boiling water onto each teabag, and forced himself to keep his voice casual. ‘What time is your shift finishing today? Want to grab a drink and have a catch-up? You know, one of those “do you remember so-and-so” conversations.’

She smiled, but briskly and – Emad worried – almost patronisingly. ‘Another time, maybe. I’m knackered. But thanks. Don’t you have a family to get back to?’

Could she be fishing for information? Or just being polite? Emad had no idea. ‘No family,’ he said, far too hastily. ‘Single Pringle, that’s me. What about you? You married? Kids?’

‘Nope. One long-term relationship, ended a year ago when he cheated on me.’

Emad affected a look of outrage. ‘What a moron! Sorry, though.’

‘Yup.’

There was a slightly awkward silence. Emad stirred the teas one by one, fished out the teabags and left them in a steaming pile on the draining board, then pulled out a carton of milk from the little undercounter fridge.

‘Better let you get on,’ Gemma said.

‘With my very important police work,’ he added, sloshing milk into the teas.