‘Your coffee is on its way. Good Christmas? At your parents, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes… that is… it got a bit… complicated.’ Esther grimaced, aware suddenly how drained she was, and in no mood to go into everything. She noticed that there was an air of exhaustion about him too, with shadows under his dark, handsome eyes, and a tense, tugged-down look to the corners of his normally smiley mouth. ‘Dylan is home though, which is good.’

‘Hey, that’s great news. I am so pleased for you.’ He clapped his hands, turning a few heads.

‘Thanks,’ Esther murmured, touched in spite of herself at his display of enthusiasm. ‘It is pretty wonderful, yes. Turned out all this time he had been with his grandfather – Lucas’s dad, the one he doesn’t speak to. We had to go on a family rescue mission… long story. But what about you? Was the Portugal Christmas fun? I thought you were heading straight from there to Holland?’

‘Slight change of plan. We wrapped ahead of schedule, so I thought I’d grab the chance of some more time with Lola, except it turns out they made a last-minute decision to go to the Caribbean. St Lucia. As you do.’ He scowled. ‘And now my agent has lined me up auditions for two projects in London – both live theatre, Chekhov in January, filling in for a late pull-out, and Gloucester in King Lear for a summer run, which is rather more hairy – not that I’m complaining.’

‘He’s the duke that gets his eyes pulled out, right?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘Well, all that sounds jolly, and also action-packed,’ Esther muttered, distracted both by the puddle her cagoule was making on the floor, and by the rising conviction that she didn’t want to be slotted into a hectic timetable.

‘What is it?’

He was looking at her with some concern. She swiped at a rogue drip that had somehow found its way onto the tip of her nose, aware suddenly that, for all the resolve and good intentions, she wasn’t just exhausted but also feeling somewhat fragile. For three days she had been in the thick of seismic change, tectonic family plates shifting; to suddenly flip into small talk was beyond her. ‘We’re all closer to falling apart – to falling off the grid – than we like to think,’ she blurted. ‘Dylan, Lucas, Lily, my friends – me…’

The arrival of her coffee broke her flow, and Esther was acutely grateful. For a moment it had felt as if she were unravelling and might never stop, forgetting all their boundaries. ‘Thank you very much for this. Much needed.’ She picked up the coffee, housed in a cup the size of a soup bowl, cradling it in her palms. ‘Sorry for not being better company. Post-Christmas fatigue, or something.’

‘Did you want the chocolate on top?’ he asked, in a bid to change the subject, Esther guessed, and not blaming him.