‘It might have been a Tesla,’ Conor says, and hangs up.

70

Jake

‘Smells good in here,’ Bex says, walking into her kitchen with a suitcase in one hand, tiny dog in the other.

‘Welcome home,’ Jake says awkwardly. Bex’s house suddenly feels very small. ‘I’ve made some dinner.’

He’s repeated his offer to move out, but Bex is insistent that he stay.

‘So this is the new man in Kate’s life?’ Jake adds, looking at the dog.

‘Meet Stretch.’ Bex lets him down onto the floor. ‘Whined the whole way up here, but otherwise he’s alright.’

Jake bends down and tickles the tiny dog behind his ears. He’d always imagined something big and smelly whenever Kate talked about getting one. This one’s long and thin, like a narrowboat.

He serves dinner once Bex has taken her stuff upstairs.

‘You’re not eating?’ she asks as she tucks into hogweed gnocchi. He found the hogweed stems earlier, picked them before the leaves fully opened.

‘Bit late for me,’ he says. ‘It’s almost midnight.’

‘You shouldn’t have stayed up. This is delicious. Like asparagus.’

‘Did you manage to speak to Kate?’ he asks.

Last time they chatted on the phone, Bex was going to call Kate after she’d seen Dr Varma.

‘Voicemail. Rang Rob too, left a casual message asking him to get Kate to call when she has a moment. I didn’t want to alarm him. You know, in case…’ She falters.

Jake looks up. He knows what she was going to say. In case Rob has been replaced by a double. By Gil. Jake has other ideas. He’s spent the evening digging into Rob’s past again, his business interests, what he’s doing in Brittany. Jake’s been here before, after the split from Kate, when he spent too many hours googling Rob. This time he thinks he might have found something.

After Bex has finished her dinner, he takes her through to the sitting room to show her what he’s discovered online.

‘On the surface, Rob and his tech empire – his “unicorn” company in the UK – is all about something called “direct neural interface” technology,’ he begins.

‘In English?’ Bex says as Jake juggles various open windows on the computer.

‘Helping the human brain to interact better with machines,’ he says. ‘Devices implanted in the cerebral cortex to operate artificial limbs, that sort of thing. He’s also invested in loads of other medical start-ups, including one that makes portable headsets for assessing brain injuries.’

‘That’s what he’s been using with Kate’s recovery,’ Bex says.

‘All good selfless stuff, improving the health of mankind.’

‘Why do I think you’re not convinced?’ Bex asks.