Lucas shut down his work tabs and for the rest of the journey into and across London found his mind wandering beyond the usual lurches of consternation about Dylan, to parenthood instead. It was never a breeze, and Heidi, with her fierce feminism, would put him through his paces, for sure. She was in no hurry, she had said, but the day would come. And he would step up to the mark, Lucas vowed, resolving to tell her as much next time they spoke. He would prove his love and his worth. He would be a better husband, a better man.

As he stepped down onto the platform at Twickenham another image rocketed inside his head before he could stop it: of Esther, a pink scarf flying round her neck, white jeans tight round her shapely legs, tottering on too-high heels after she had somehow slid through ticket barriers to meet him on a London visit. ‘I couldn’t wait,’ she said, planting breathy kisses across his ears and nose and cheeks, ‘not one more single second.’

Lucas fumbled for his ticket and hurried out onto the street, pausing to check his phone for the postcode Charlie Giddings had given him. It was a local park, a place where, as he had put it, they could ‘walk and talk’. With the mediation session now scheduled for the following Monday, still six days away, the timing was excellent in terms of giving everyone the chance to regroup. The ridiculous parameters outlined for the session still filled Lucas with outrage every time he thought of them: two adjoining college rooms, so that Moira could have her wish of not having to ‘share her space’ with him. He was to be kept in the second room, caged like some sort of rapacious beast. Persuading Moira that such extreme precaution was both absurd and unnecessary – that they could conduct their discussion face to face – was one of his key hopes for meeting her father. If her own parent could see reason on this, then it could prove a stepping stone to defusing everything.

Later, Lucas would wonder at what precise moment it dawned on him that the entire mission was a mistake. He’d had misgivings, of course, given the delicacy of the situation, but had taken heart from the fact that Charlie Giddings had been the one to reach out to him. Their mutual promise of complete discretion had been reassuring too.