She kissed my mouth and read my thoughts, and the traffic down on Marylebone High Street seemed to be coming from some other world. She held my hands and made me feel her, made me know her properly, made me understand what had changed.

The bruises were gone.

‘I healed,’ Natasha said.

We loved and slept the day away.

I had not slept by someone’s side for a long time. It was a delicious feeling, a private world of warmth and safety and longing. But then, too soon, it was time for me to go.

I slipped out of the sheets, and the dog at the foot of the bed stirred with annoyance and then went back to sleep.

Natasha was half awake, and I sat by her side and smoothed her hair and very softly ran my hands over the smooth warmth of her skin and all of that seemed to make her more sleepy and smiley.

‘Oh, come back to bed,’ she said. ‘Don’t make me call the cops.’

I kissed her arm.

‘I have to pick up my daughter.’

‘Then come back tonight. Both of you. I’m not a cook but there are some great restaurants round here. What does Scout like?’

‘We have to do something tonight. Family stuff.’

She hugged me.

‘OK,’ she said, waking up a bit now, the real world creeping into this secret room. ‘I know you’re a father. I know a dad has to do what a dad has to do, right?’

I kissed her cheek, her neck, her mouth.

‘Right,’ I said.

‘But we’ll work it out,’ she said, and I believed her.

I parked the X5 outside a terraced house on a quiet street in Pimlico.

Scout was in the passenger seat, holding Stan and a bouquet of white flowers that was almost as big as her – lilies and roses and flowers that neither of us knew the name of.

Bringing flowers always felt like an imposition to me. A vase had to be found. Stems cut, water added, topped up at regular intervals, and one week later the dead flowers had to be thrown out, the stinking green water poured away, the vase washed clean.

It felt like you were asking a lot of someone when you gave them flowers.

Then Scout grinned at me as we got out of the car – a new smile, a gappy smile, because she had lost two teeth at the bottom, the first of her milk teeth to go – and I knew the flowers didn’t matter a damn. What mattered was her, and us, and knowing that coming here was the right thing to do.

Scout rang the bell. Stan barked once, then again, his feathery tail revolving with excitement. From beyond the door’s frosted glass I heard the excited yap of a West Highland Terrier.