The sound of a gentle tap woke Spokes up. He opened his eyes and, through the window, saw a new day break. His body was stiff and he did not have room to stretch it, folded as he was in a confined space. He felt trapped. A creaky cupboard door opened and closed. He made a mental note to fix it. Soon after, the oven door yawned open and then snapped shut as the air filled with the scent of warm vanilla. Spokes looked in the direction of the kitchen, and there was the lovely Loveness, as becoming as ever in her pink nightdress, gown and slippers. She looked like all the softest things, and Spokes was sure moments like these were created solely to remind him of how much he loved her.

‘How many nights do you intend to spend like this?’ she asked without looking at him.

‘As many as are necessary to have me finally be forgiven,’ he said.

She watched him try to stretch his stiff and aching limbs again, and made a frustrated sound. ‘You cannot spend every night on the sofa.’ Her hands came to rest on her hips, and Spokes’s hopes sank. A standing-akimbo Loveness did not bode well for him.

‘Well, when we married, I promised myself we would never go to bed angry with one another,’ he said.

‘I’m not angry with you,’ she said.

‘Your back turned towards me every night says otherwise,’ Spokes said as he got off the sofa and went to stand as close to her as he felt he could at that moment, which was not nearly close enough.

She looked at him for a long minute before dropping her arms to hang by her sides. ‘And look at this collar,’ she said, eventually reaching out to touch him. She tried and failed to smooth out his collar. ‘Have you been ironing it?’

‘Yes,’ Spokes said, grateful and glad for her closeness and her touch, and no longer feeling trapped.

‘With starch?’

‘I cannot find the starch.’

‘You cannot find the starch that is exactly where it has always been for the past twenty years? You just don’t know how to starch a collar properly.’

‘There may be a lot of truth to that,’ Spokes said. He reached out to take her hand in his, and she let him.

‘Tell me one good thing,’ Loveness said.

‘I can tell you many good things about this very moment,’ Spokes said.

‘I see you woke up with sugar on your tongue,’ Loveness said, allowing herself to lean towards him. ‘I meant, one good thing about being the Acting Chief Superintendent.’

‘Griffiths came back. I am back to being Chief Inspector.’

‘And?’

‘And … one good thing?’

‘One good thing.’

‘For the first time in my long career, I had an office all to myself. But then I realised I was already the king of infinite space because of you.’