She tugged on his arm, kissing his shoulder. ‘Well, that is good to hear, and I shall be patient. But you don’t look so well, Lucas. Are you properly better from the sickness? After Ralph’s lunch?’ she prompted when he did not immediately reply.

‘Oh, I see, yes. Absolutely. It dragged on a bit, as these things do. I’m only sorry it meant I’ve not been up to proper communications. Though I didn’t want to keep bombarding you either, not with your walking trip and then just trying to chill with your family… ah, there’s the car, and now I must find a machine to pay. Then I want to hear all your news, darling, especially the trekking – the Black Forest is a place I’d love to go. Do you think you could bear to return there one day, with me in tow? That’s all I want, Heidi, you and me exploring the world together…’ He let go of the case and swept her hair off her face to kiss her again, hungrily. ‘Thank you, darling, for loving me, for believing in me, for everything.’

Later, in her bed, Lucas’s love-making had the same urgent ardour, but then he couldn’t finish.

‘Sorry. That’s never…’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Heidi put in quickly, too kind to say that it sort of did matter.

‘I’ll make it up to you, I promise. In the morning.’

‘Lucas, it is fine. I am tired too. Let us go to sleep.’ Minutes later, his breathing settled into an audible rhythm. Lying awake, her body humming, Heidi reached out and trailed the backs of her fingers across the dark hairs on the forearm he had draped over her stomach. His head was turned towards her, his mouth slightly open, displaying the tips of his strong even teeth. Without her he fell apart. Heidi rolled the words around her mind. Lucas had written them to her and then reiterated the phrase that evening as they picked at the awful oily, over-salted supermarket snacks that had constituted her homecoming dinner, the immaculate, blood-red roses parked between them, in two vases because there had been so many.

Bombay mix, cheese and onion crisps, tubs of coleslaw, rubbery prawns drowning in a sickly, sweet sauce, and hunks of a supermarket baguette. Heidi had begun eating only to be kind, and then found herself glad to have something to swallow as Lucas at last announced the stark details of the long-awaited outcome of the managed talks with Moira. There had been a little bit of press attention too, he added quickly, while she was still wide-eyed, processing both the drastic verdict and his extraordinary composure in describing it. He had closed his Twitter account as a precaution, he explained in the same almost serene manner, but it had all died down now and wasn’t anything to worry about.

‘But… two years, Lucas. Two years.’