Lucas rolled onto his side to sit up. The heating had gone off and his feet, just in their socks, were stiff with cold. His eyes, casting round the room for purchase, fell on Dylan’s postcard. His body started to shake. He had thought he could be better. He had thought that if he tried hard enough, for long enough, he could leave all that was bad behind.

There were no parking spaces outside the house. There rarely were late at night. Esther had to drive on for another fifty yards before she found a suitable slot. Walking back to her front door, she was glad of her blue woollen coat, which she pulled up around her ears. Not yet half way through September, and the night felt like a plunge into winter. Esther slid her fingers deep into her pockets and tipped her head down against a sudden gust of icy drizzle that almost blew her off her feet. Dylan-worry hovered, as it always did, but it was Lily who sat, still, in the centre of her mind, a little happier at least, her burden shared, though only Lucas could really give her the reassurance she needed. Lucas, who was not her problem, Esther reminded herself, as she had been doing throughout the drive home, her mobile silent on the passenger seat.

Preoccupied, eyes down, she was only dimly aware of a person walking towards her. The pavement was wide, and she had already reached the lamp post aligned with Sue and Dimitri’s front door. Esther steered a little more towards it, wanting to allow more space for the person to pass, registering only someone who was tall, dark-coated, and wearing a flat cap. When the figure promptly stepped into her path, putting hefty arms around her, she uttered a cry of sheer surprise. ‘What the…? Chris?’ His face, half hidden under the peak of his hat, was jubilant. She tried to push him away, but his arms were clamped.

‘Esther. At last.’ He rocked her from side to side, as if they were slow dancing. ‘I’ve been waiting. Worrying, actually… was the traffic bad? From Cambridge? And how is Lily?’

‘Chris, what are you doing here?’ Esther asked dumbly. He had suddenly released her, and she was tempted to run. The decision not to flashed out from a clear lucid corner of her brain, processing options with the fury of a computer: Dimitri and Sue’s house, behind his head, was as dark as hers, and Carmela’s for that matter. The street was dank and empty. Her front door, a mere twenty-second sprint away, would need her two keys, floating somewhere on a small brass ring in the mess of her handbag; impossible to weaponize, let alone be grabbed and smoothly applied to double-unlocking – not without giving her interlocutor ample time to take actions of his own. Whatever they might be.