In the toilet after the meal, Lucas studied the framed collages of family photos arranged round the walls. Ralph and Catherine maypole dancing; toothless babies beaming in the arms of grandparents; Ralph on his knees playing horse for two toddlers; Catherine idly reading a book while being buried in sand by a skinnier version of her skinny son. It was not a family life Lucas recognised, either from his own childhood, or as a father. He had never been wired for playing the fool like Ralph, despite Esther’s best efforts to eke such stuff out of him. But he had tried to be a good parent. Hadn’t he? The images in the frames blurred. His lower leg was pounding inside the stretchy bandage that the chemist had assured him would offer protective support.

‘Courage, mon brave,’ Ralph said, with a jarring effort at cheerfulness once Lucas, reaching the end of his limits, had refused coffee and they were on the front doorstep. ‘It could have been so much worse.’

Lucas, holding his bike by its handlebars in preparation to navigate his way back to his flat, slowly raised his head to look his friend in the face. In his mind, the fog thinned sufficiently to replay the unspeakable image of Moira – the debasing, shuttling negotiations completed – being hustled to ‘safety’ along a corridor, her parents on either side of her, throwing jerky looks over their shoulders in case Lucas, poised in the doorway of his allocated room, was already tempted to break the now formalised agreement never – knowingly – to breathe the same air as their daughter. She was to be allowed to finish her degree. To enable this, Lucas, from that day forwards, would be on two years’ ‘leave’. Two. Years. ‘How so, Ralph?’

‘Try to think of it as a sabbatical…’ Ralph began, before even his determined joviality deserted him. ‘Believe me, I am not trying to make light…’ He floundered again, perhaps under the glittering misery in Lucas’s eyes. ‘It was the price for drawing a line.’ He sighed. ‘A price worth paying, surely. A signed agreement. No official complaint. No courtroom dramas – dear God, Lucas, it really could have gone down that road. I think the Master was right to take the offer of a way of steering us out of it. Which isn’t to say for a single moment that I do not acknowledge how hard this must be for you. I am just trying to point out the positives. A temporary lecturer will be found to cover. Your post isn’t going anywhere. Maybe even regard it as time out from the hurly-burly, eh? Time for your work, and for Heidi. She’s back at the weekend, right?’ Ralph patted Lucas’s arm. ‘And you mentioned that that globe-trotting son of yours had at last been in touch? That’s good. All this will pass, mate. Just keep your head down.’