‘What are you saying? You really captured Stretch today.’ He opens the car door. ‘Coming in?’

‘Mind if I stay here?’ she says, turning away. Something’s not right. Again.

‘Sure.’ He grabs his bag from the back seat and leans over to kiss her goodbye. She closes her eyes.

‘I’ll call you,’ he says. ‘Hope it goes well with Dr Varma.’

Kate fingers the beach glass around her neck as Rob walks across to the station building. Just before he enters, a woman she doesn’t recognise comes up to him and they hug, smiling, laughing. Long face, like a horse. Rob isn’t a natural social animal – his first instinct is always to swerve away – but Kate can see he’s making an effort, eyes blinking. Maybe this woman is another investor.

She watches the two of them chat and thinks how little she really knows about Rob’s London existence. It doesn’t bother her. He’d probably say the same about her life down here. The weeks are long without him and she’s made some good friends in the village. Who does he see in London? Or in Brittany, where he’s been going a lot in recent weeks? She’s not a jealous person, but she knows Bex thinks it’s odd that she’s never been to Rob’s flat in Shoreditch or his offices in Old Street.

‘Rob needs to know how much we love him,’ she says to Stretch, determined to shake off the unnerving thoughts that are starting to inveigle themselves in her head.

She grabs the dog under one arm, climbs out the car and strides over to where Rob is still chatting. He hasn’t seen her approach. And then he turns.

‘Kate! Everything OK?’ he asks.

She stands there, frozen to the spot, to the right of him. It’s that same tingling sensation again, a lurching nausea, only stronger this time – the disconcerting feeling that the man in front of her is both Rob and not Rob. Familiar but unfamiliar. Recognisable but a stranger. Not so much déjà vu as jamais vu.

She inhales deeply, tries to focus on the red bricks of the station wall, something solid, definite, steadying. Her vision starts to blur. Is she about to have another migraine? This feels different. Rob is definitely acting strangely, like someone she doesn’t know.

He’ll take over my life, me, you, the house, all that I’ve achieved, everything that’s precious to me.

Kate swallows. She should have had the conversation with Rob, got him to talk more about his fear of doppelgängers, open up about his vulnerabilities. She turns towards horse face, whose strong nose suddenly strikes her as beautiful. Is that why Rob is behaving like this?

‘I just…’ She hesitates, sneaks a look at the woman’s slender figure.

‘Give me a second,’ Rob says to the woman.