He was in limbo, Lucas realised, a little afraid of his own dejection, as, instead of moving through the station, he stood contemplating the spaghetti junction of the train map. The edges of the lines kept blurring, like his brain. The day already felt endless, but it was still only eleven o’ clock. As soon as he was back in Cambridge – or maybe even on the train – he knew he would now have to start composing a letter to explain the misguided acceptance of the invitation to meet with Moira’s father. It would need care and precision and humility. The motives – which had been entirely well-intentioned – needed to be emphasised, along with the plea for it not to prejudice his innocence during the looming ghastliness of mediation.

Instead, Lucas’s scrutiny of the map of train lines became a calculation of how many stops Twickenham was from Esther’s patch of West London. He knew the Kingston address well enough, the chore of forwarding mail being an intermittent cause for irritation, although a reason to actually to visit his ex-wife’s house had never presented itself.

The journey proved straightforward and the street easy to find. Lucas walked along it as quickly as he could manage, battling against the wind with his umbrella.

The grime of London was always a shock. The blackened bricks of the houses and the eyesore of the railway embankment, shadowing the long, thin curve of the road, gave him a shiver of gratitude that he was a visitor and not a resident. The trains alone would drive him spare, Lucas thought, as one thundered past.

It was in a state of mind marginally fortified by a reminder of his own good fortune, therefore, that Lucas stopped to appraise the small house that now accommodated his ex-wife. It sat in a string of squat terraced houses, workers’ cottages by the look of them, their once sandy brickwork weathered to a charcoal grey, the paintwork scruffy. It had been Esther’s decision to leave, Lucas reminded himself, suppressing another twinge of something akin to sympathy, aware suddenly of the degree of his ignorance about any aspect of her life without him. She wrote copy for business publications. She gave piano lessons. Presumably, she went on the odd date. If she had met ‘someone’, however, that would have surely become obvious to him – and the children – by now.