‘Sure.’ She glances nervously at Kate. ‘See you on the train.’

‘I just wanted to say goodbye properly,’ Kate manages to say. ‘We both do,’ she adds, nodding at Stretch in her arms.

‘You need to rest,’ Rob says, hugging Kate and Stretch. She mustn’t cry. ‘And talk to Dr Varma. I’ve got to go.’

She watches him walk into the station, wondering what’s happening to her.

6

Kate

‘Bex, I wouldn’t be asking you to do this if it wasn’t important.’

Kate’s still in the Tesla at the train station car park, on the phone to her best friend.

‘You think he’s having an affair or what?’ Bex asks.

‘Maybe,’ she says, turning to stroke Stretch, who is asleep on the passenger seat beside her.

‘So what exactly am I meant to be looking out for?’ Bex asks.

Bex is a schoolteacher. Lancashire born and bred, she is also Kate’s best friend, which is kind of her, as she doesn’t suffer fools gladly. They used to live in the same Wiltshire village and watch Fleabag while eating butter pie at her place. And now Kate’s asking a massive favour.

‘I want you to see if Rob’s with anyone when he gets off the train… and tell me how he seems to you,’ she says, realising how absurd she must sound. ‘How he looks.’

‘What? Mark him out of ten? He’s well fit, Kate. We already know that. Tens all round, even from Craig.’

Why’s Bex in such an annoying mood? Probably because Kate’s asking her to intercept Rob at Paddington, see if he’s different in any way.

‘I was behaving really strangely just now,’ Kate says. ‘When I waved him goodbye.’

Bex laughs. ‘That’s not like you.’

‘Seriously, Bex. Rob bumped into this woman at the station and suddenly he seemed like a different person… I can’t explain what I felt. I just know it was one of the weirdest moments of my life.’ Up there with the time she saw Jake, her ex, with another woman.

‘You was acting strangely? Or he was?’

Bex’s accent might have been softened by years of living down south, but she’s lost none of her northern bluntness.

‘If I told you what I was thinking, you’d laugh at me,’ Kate says.

‘Do I ever? Even that time you tried doing the paso doble in the pub, I never once giggled.’

She’s lying. They’d both laughed like drains that night. Her relationship with Jake was on the rocks and she’d needed cheering up.

‘I thought Rob…’ Kate’s words tail off. She’s crying. Stretch raises his head.

‘You alright?’ Bex asks, more gently now. ‘Is it that woman at the station?’