Uncertain if it was allowed, she had waited for the cohort to disappear and then tried the chapel door herself. She’d half expected it to be locked, but it had eased open at once, with a small creak. Inside, her trainers squeaking faintly on the heavy stone-slabbed floor, Heidi had found herself slipping into one of the back pews.

Eyes closed, she willed the little flame inside her to grow. She wanted peace, she wanted answers. When neither arrived, she opened her eyes and concentrated instead on the Old Testament scenes in the stained-glass windows, exuberant colours on fire thanks to a sudden burst of sunshine outside. She liked Jonah the best, Heidi decided, stuck half in and half out of the jaws of the whale and looking as astonished as he was terrified. It reminded her of how she had felt in the street outside the jeweller’s, taking the call from Elias instead of having a proper goodbye talk with Lucas. The mounting realisation that she did not want another engagement ring had been too huge to put into words. She had lost the one she’d loved, along with the uprush of joyous certainty as she held out her finger for Lucas to slide it into place.

That Lucas had been trying so very hard didn’t help. Ever since the upsetting showdown after the airport, he had a new, intense way of asking how she was and what she was up to. If she said she wanted a couple of days to herself, he acquiesced with a look of desperate acceptance that made her feel guilty. Was he going to drink? she would ask, like some gaoler, and the greyness would enter his face and he would say no, and she never knew whether to believe him. He would read her doubt and get angry, adjusting the new spectacles he hated and raising his voice to say that he had made a promise and was sticking to it; that all he wanted was her, to get properly fit again, and to work. His dining-room table had become his new workstation, with his computer, books, document piles and pen pots laid out with the precision of a draughtsman. He was making ‘real’ progress, he claimed, and though Heidi rejoiced at this, there was something about the rigidity of the lines on the work table that unnerved her. As if he was penning himself in. When she stayed over now, this new, preciously guarded set-up also meant having to eat their meals on their laps instead of facing each other more easily across the table. Sometimes, Lucas even flicked the television on as they ate – finding an interesting documentary or news programme, almost as if, like her, he was increasingly afraid of where too much talking might lead. Work was at least a safe subject. If she asked about Dylan, or Lily, he snapped. They were grown-ups, he said, and making their own way.