Heidi’s beautiful face filled the screen, smiling, but with an index finger raised to indicate that she was still on her morning stint in the library and couldn’t speak. Lucas mouthed I love you and she mouthed the same in return, blowing a kiss before vanishing.

The emptiness inside him afterwards made Lucas pull the desk drawer open again. At Heidi’s sensible insistence, they never saw quite as much of each other during a Dylan visit, and he had been missing her badly. ‘Your children must not think I am taking their father away,’ she had said in her practical way after their love-making the previous evening, Lucas having grabbed at the chance of Dylan’s London party to invite her to the flat. ‘Then they will like me. And soon, Liebchen, your Dylan will be at university and we shall have the rest of our lives, if we want.’

The rest of their lives. It was the sort of comment that she had started lobbing out from time to time, in a gloriously understated manner that gave him goosebumps, and hope. Dreamily, Lucas reached into the back of the drawer and took out the small leather box. The sprung lid opened with a little creak, revealing the most expensive item of jewellery he had ever touched, let alone purchased. The deep-blue sapphire circled by tiny diamonds glittered in its blue velvet bed, so bright he had to blink. Little wonder jewelled rings made it into the plots of countless fantastical texts, ancient and otherwise, Lucas mused, feeling the sharp edges of the stone as he pressed it gently to his lips. He wasn’t going to put a foot wrong this time around. Not a single one.

5

Esther sat on the chair beside the piano stool, watching Chris Mews’ birthday roses, glorious in her best blue vase, shake in protest at Billy’s clunking hit-and-miss attack on the piano keys. There had been a card with the bouquet:

Thinking of you on your Special Day, Chris xxx

which was now in her bin. To dispose of the twelve stems of brilliant-crimson flowers too, had seemed both unnecessary and something of a crime.

‘Well done, Billy. Let’s try that again, but more slowly, okay? And this time I’ll tap my foot to help you keep the rhythm.’ Esther demonstrated, slapping the sole of her good foot on the floor and then nodding her head and humming the first few bars of the piece, a simple march, to get him going. This worked for a few seconds, but then he began to strain against the beat she was keeping, like a pony on a leash, wanting its head. Billy was a big fan of speed, Esther reminded herself with despairing fondness, as she had learnt from all their scattered conversations about the mini league football team whose multiple victories, according to Billy, were invariably based on his ability to outrun anybody on the pitch.