Is he coming nearer? Please God, keep him away. She can’t cope with this any more.

‘I’m OK, just need to stay in here for a bit. On my own. You go back to bed.’

‘You sure?’

Rob’s voice, Rob’s sympathy… What’s wrong with her? She should turn around to look at him again, but she can’t.

‘I might sleep in the other bedroom, so I don’t disturb you,’ she manages to say.

‘Let me know if you need anything,’ he says kindly.

She closes her eyes as she hears him walk back to the bedroom.

77

Jake

‘Do you trust him?’ Jake asks as they drive on towards London.

‘Who, Rob?’ Bex asks, moving to overtake a solitary lorry on the motorway.

Jake nods, shifting in his seat. It might be his imagination, but it’s feeling a little warmer in the car than it was.

‘He’s been great for Kate,’ Bex says. ‘The Rob I know. The real Rob.’

‘But do you trust him?’ Jake repeats.

‘Yes, I trust him.’ Bex casts him another glance, as if wondering where he’s going with this. ‘So does Kate.’

Jake turns away and stares out of the window, watching a group of workmen in high-vis jackets behind a line of flickering traffic cones on the motorway’s hard shoulder. He used to write from dusk until dawn in his last days with Kate, but it wasn’t because he was a natural night owl. It was because she was asleep in their bed and he couldn’t bear to feel lonely lying beside her.

‘She trusted you too,’ Bex continues.

He squirms in his seat. It was inevitable that at some stage they’d talk about what happened between him and Kate. And now seems as good a time as any. According to the satnav, it’s another hour before they reach Rob’s house in Shoreditch.

‘That’s what made it so hard for her,’ Bex says. ‘We all know she can be a bit skittish, likes to flirt with everyone, but she would never have been unfaithful to you. Not in a million years.’

‘I know,’ he says. ‘I messed up.’ He thinks about opening a window. Maybe it’s hot in the car because he’s burning with shame.

‘Who was she, by the way?’ Bex asks, failing to sound casual. ‘Kate never said.’

Jake tries not to think about that day if he can help it. It was not his finest hour. One of the worst in his life, in fact.

‘Kate never asked,’ he says. ‘And I never told her.’ He pauses. ‘I didn’t even get her name, her real one.’

‘No way.’ Bex throws him a mischievous smile.