On Saturday, they took a trip to Covent Garden and bought their wedding outfits. Jamie bought a fabulous velvet suit and Kirsty spent a fortune they didn’t really have on a beautiful dress from Whistles. Jamie put it on his credit card. He refused to worry about the expense – this was their wedding day, after all. When Kirsty came out of the changing room in the dress, Jamie felt like applauding. She was stunning. Kirsty looked at herself in the mirror and burst into tears.

Surely, Jamie thought, it couldn’t be the wedding alone that was making Kirsty seem so happy, apparently oblivious to all the crap that was going on around them. Even the appearance of a spider in the bathroom the other day had not fazed her: she had calmly called for Jamie to get rid of it, whereas a few weeks ago she would have had a screaming fit. She was so calm that Jamie wondered briefly if she was on drugs. She was a nurse so it wouldn’t be very hard for her to get hold of a bottle of tranquillizers. He quickly dismissed the idea, admonished himself for being stupid. Kirsty would never fill her body with drugs – she wouldn’t risk harming the baby in any way.

‘You seem to be handling all this much better than I am,’ he said to her one night, sitting in front of the TV. ‘A couple of weeks ago you were really stressed, but now you seem as if you’re not worried about Lucy and Chris any more.’

She turned to him. ‘It’s not that I’m not worried, Jamie, but I’m trying to put things into perspective. I hate them. I’d be delighted if they moved out. I’d be pleased if they just stopped writing us such stupid letters. But it’s not as if they’ve actually threatened us physically. In fact, I think they’re staring to get bored. The hoaxes have dried up. We haven’t seen them for weeks.’

‘But their presence is always there.’

‘I don’t know. I’ve almost managed to put them from my mind.’ She put her hands on his shoulders. ‘Jamie, we’ve got so much to look forward to. We’re going to be parents. That’s a lot scarier than our neighbours, surely.’

He laughed.

She took his hand and rested it on her stomach. ‘I simply want to think about the future, Jamie. And I don’t have enough mental energy to waste my thoughts on Lucy and Chris.’