Heather looked out at the rain. ‘Yeah, and I bet he’s somewhere a lot sunnier than this. I’ll never understand why he became so friendly with Lucy and Chris. Did you ever contact him, tell him what they did?’

‘No.’ Thinking about Paul was painful. Something had happened to him when he’d had his accident, something that still didn’t make sense. If Jamie had been a religious or superstitious person he might believe that something supernatural had happened to Paul while he was in that coma, that he had lost part of his soul. But there had to be a rational explanation for it. Had the accident done something to the wiring inside Paul’s brain? Maybe it had made his brain more like Lucy and Chris’s: the mind of a psychopath, self-centred, cold, acting without conscience. If that was the case, then Paul would have had more in common with his new friends than he did with Jamie and Kirsty.

He kissed Heather goodbye and she gave him her number, told him to call. On the way back to his digs, he screwed it up and threw it in a bin. Heather was a link to the past. If he was going to make a fresh start, all such links had to be severed.

Now, he stood up and decided to head back to his room. Tomorrow, he would go to the job club, get his CV updated, check out the job sites. He had a lot of experience, even if his knowledge of computers was no longer completely up to date. It wasn’t going to be easy finding a new job, but he knew he could do it. And once he had one he could rent a flat. Sooner or later he would meet someone new. Maybe they would buy somewhere together.

A house, this time. A detached house.

He reached the hostel and went inside. Carol was in the hallway, talking to someone on the phone. She gestured for Jamie to wait. While he waited he looked around. Yes, this was a nice place. He was going to like it here. He knew they would support him, look after him while he regained his balance. He felt a rush of optimism. He would never be able to sort himself out if he was still in a B&B. God, if this place hadn’t taken him in, he might have ended up on the streets again, begging, drinking, starving. Dying. But here he was. He felt like giving Carol a kiss. He had been saved.

She put the phone down and said, ‘Your new neighbour’s moved in, in room D. I thought you might want to say hello, introduce yourself.’

‘Good idea.’

He climbed the stairs and knocked on the door of Room D. From within, a woman said, ‘It’s open.’