She calls Stretch and closes the door after him. Rob must have forgotten to lock it in their rush to get to the train station earlier. And then she goes back in to take the copy of The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. She’ll have plenty of time to read and return it. But before she’s reached the desk, her phone rings. It’s Bex.

10

Kate

‘I feel like an undercover cop on a stakeout,’ Bex says, whispering. ‘Is this what you used to do in your old job?’

‘Where are you?’ Kate asks, trying to put a lead on Stretch, who is desperate for his walk.

‘Pret a Manger, Paddington station. Rob’s train is about to arrive on platform one.’

‘Are you actually going to meet him?’ Kate asks, closing the front door behind her. She can’t be bothered to follow Rob’s instructions and triple-lock it. And she hasn’t set the alarm in weeks. This is rural Cornwall, not Shoreditch. She heads on down to the lush green field below the house, Stretch pulling on his lead, and cuts across to the coast path that runs along the bottom of their land, marked by a herringbone slate wall.

‘I’ll say hello if… if something doesn’t seem right…’ Bex’s words tail off. ‘I’m tucked away in a corner,’ she continues. ‘Got a clear view of people walking past. I’ll chat to him if he sees me.’

Kate tries to picture her in the window of Pret. ‘Thanks, Bex.’

Bex explains that she’ll do some galleries after intercepting Rob and then come on down to Truro this evening.

She’s really going the distance – and for what? Kate holds onto the memory of that unfamiliar look in Rob’s eye, the overwhelming sense of disconnect that she felt.

‘I had nothing planned this weekend anyway,’ Bex adds. ‘Just the usual gang in the Slaughtered Lamb tonight. It’s not been the same since you left.’

Kate used to go to their local a lot with Jake, found herself drinking more and more. She tells herself she doesn’t miss him, the claustrophobic life they shared, particularly on days like today. The salt-fresh air, blue sky, the sea laid out like sheet glass below her. She’d been going out with Jake for years, since they met at university. Perhaps it was the combination of their jobs – a portrait artist and an author – that did for them in the end, living and working in each other’s pockets on a tiny narrowboat. Or the fact that they couldn’t seem to have children. Their careers never quite took off either, which didn’t help. It was why she took the police job in the end. One of them had to earn some money.

‘Hold up, here comes his train now,’ Bex says.

‘He’ll be at the front,’ she says. ‘First class.’

‘Of course he bloody will.’