‘Don’t say sorry – you are banned from my house, forthwith.’ Esther laughed as Marcus accepted a beer from Dimmy, and Sue herded them all into the sitting room. She promptly disappeared back into the kitchen, while Dimmy beckoned Lola over to the television to help him scroll through the Disney channel.

‘So everything got sorted with the arrangements for your aunt, then,’ Esther ventured, twiddling the stem of her wine glass and wondering if Marcus was remembering the last occasion they had been in a sitting room together, back in September. ‘Those nightmare logistics.’ She kept her expression impassive, glad he could not see the images sky-rocketing in her head.

‘Yep, all done and dusted.’ His tone was business-like. ‘Hordes of family and friends. The weather was great. Not a single hitch. Enough ceremony to please a pope. Just the house to sell now, and then I’m done. Dropping Lola back with her mum tonight and then it’s Holland again tomorrow. A fun shoot though, I have to admit. Great crew. Great city.’ He smiled in his easy way, and Esther decided to be proud of the straightforwardness of what had happened between them. It felt so simple, so grown up. Sex wasn’t everything. It was just part of something, if you wanted it to be.

Ten minutes later, after Marcus had bolted a few mouthfuls of Sue’s delicious lamb tagine, and Lola had been persuaded to eat a banana, they were gone. Esther had stayed for a couple more hours, unwisely helping Dimitri finish a bottle of wine over a conversation that had rarely wavered from the subject of pregnancy, before gathering up the folds of her sheet and scooting home.

It would be hard to think of two people more deserving of a baby, Esther reflected now, wistfulness threatening, as she set to the task of creating a measure of order out of the mess on Dylan’s desk. She picked a random podcast on her phone and worked methodically, dropping obvious rubbish into the black sack she had brought up from the kitchen for the purpose. Spraying copious amounts of aerosol as she dusted, she began to arrange and stack all the stuff she dared not throw away. The tidying was about hope and love, Esther told herself, the wistfulness increasing as she registered that the two people doing the podcast, a celebrity comedian and an athlete, were walking and talking – about emotional well-being – in Shropshire. Near Ludlow. Near Lucas’s family home.