He nodded, but he couldn’t quite tune in to her wavelength. He couldn’t cast Lucy and Chris from his mind, no matter how hard he tried. And also, he wasn’t sure how sincere Kirsty was being. It might just be that she was putting on a brave face, persuading herself that she needed to be happy. He was worried that her mood was a veneer, and that it could be torn away at any time.

He prayed that this wouldn’t happen, because he needed her strength and optimism. He was doing enough worrying for both of them. Every night before he went to sleep he fell into a state of semi-conscious worry, his mind focusing on one problem after another. He would worry about Paul, wondering why he was being such an arsehole, wondering if the doctors were wrong when they said he had suffered no mental damage. Then he would start worrying about something else. Work, money, how they would manage with one-and-a-half salaries when Kirsty had the baby and went part-time. He worried about how the baby would affect their relationship. He worried about how his parents would react when they discovered he and Kirsty had got married without telling or inviting them.

And most of all, he worried about Lucy and Chris. What would they do next? Would they play that awful music again? He felt as if there were two invisible trolls living underneath him – these malicious entities that he never saw, only heard or heard from. He wondered if they should move out, then reaffirmed his determination that they had to stay. At the end of his cycle of worries, he always fell asleep with two people on his mind: not Kirsty and their unborn child, as it should be, but Lucy and Chris.

What are you going to do about it?

The day after his big scene with Paul, he had been standing in the gents toilet at work, drying his hands. The door opened and Mike came in. He nodded hello to Jamie then stood at the urinal and unzipped. There was no-one else around.