Jake is not sure if her compliment has just turned sour. He’s never seen himself as an urban hipster. More of a washed-up hick. They drive on in silence. Bex starts to indicate to turn off at the approaching junction. And then Jake has an idea.

‘Hang on,’ he says, leaning forward to use the display screen again.

‘What you doing?’ Bex asks, glancing at him.

‘This is Rob’s Cornwall car, right? But I’m guessing he’s kept it in London too at some stage?’

‘Nothing would surprise me,’ Bex says. ‘Although Kate did mention once that he was thinking of buying another one for London. Never likes to do things by halves, does Rob.’

Jake googles the postcode for Shoreditch High Street and then fires up the satnav on the car’s display screen.

‘If I put in “Home” on the satnav,’ he says, typing on the screen, ‘it will take me to… Cornwall. OK.’ He glances at Bex’s phone again. ‘But what if I type in the postcode for Shoreditch… N1… Bingo.’

Predictive typing has kicked in, as he suspected, and a full postcode in Shoreditch is now displayed on the screen, which means it must have been entered at least once before.

‘I bet you this is where Rob lives,’ he says, activating the route. ‘And where Kate called from.’

‘Keep going?’ Bex says, turning off the indicator.

‘We owe it to Kate.’

76

Kate

‘I have a confession to make,’ Kate says, pulling up the sheet, her eyes still shut.

‘Were you faking it?’ Rob mumbles, barely awake.

She prods him in the ribs. They’ve just had the best sex she can remember.

‘You know when you said you’d seen me on Facebook and I denied it?’ she says.

‘Mmm…?’

She takes a deep breath.

‘Well, I was on there.’

‘Worse crimes have been committed on social media,’ he says, his voice almost inaudible now.

‘I was talking to one of your old friends.’

‘Who?’

That’s woken him up. Is she making a mistake?

‘I’d rather not say,’ she continues. ‘It’s not important. I was just trying to arrange a surprise.’ She thinks back to what Jake told her, keen to stick as closely as she can to his story. ‘For your thirtieth birthday.’

‘You know I don’t like being reminded of my age. Or surprises.’

‘That’s why I’m telling you now,’ she lies. ‘You liked my surprise tonight.’

‘That was different.’ His voice is fading. She hasn’t got long.

‘This friend of yours told me what happened in Thailand,’ she says, ‘on the beach.’ She tries to conceal her nerves, but her voice is shaking. ‘I realise you don’t want to talk about it,’ she continues. ‘I just want you to know that… well, that I know. And I understand. It must’ve been frightening.’