‘Splendid. Catherine and I saw her stuff in St Ives a few years ago. Mind-blowing.’ He turned to Lucas. ‘I’ll leave you both to it. Take that coffee another time. Lovely to see you, Esther.’ He flashed his big bearded smile and shot off, slamming the door behind him before thumping back down the stairs.

‘I needed some printer paper,’ Esther repeated, aware that Lucas had a slightly fixed look on his face. ‘And I found this.’ She twiddled the phone.

‘Ah, thank you.’ He smacked his forehead in a demonstration of his own gormlessness. ‘A student left it. I’d completely forgotten. I’ll drop it at the lodge.’ He stepped towards her, holding out his hand.

‘Oh, I see.’ Esther looked again at the phone. ‘A bit retro for a student.’ Something odd had happened to the air around them; a stillness. Lucas was grinning extravagantly, his palm stretched in front of her. Like a Master asking a pupil to hand something over, Esther found herself thinking; something she shouldn’t have. ‘Which student?’

He laughed loudly. ‘Ah, well, that I don’t know, I’m afraid. I found it. Down the back of the sofa…’

‘We could try and find out, surely.’ She carefully placed her thin sheaf of paper on the desk and started to examine the phone more closely.

‘It was a while back, and who knows how long it had been there? It’s probably dead.’

It had a button saying ‘OK’, which came to life when Esther pressed it.

‘Here, let me see.’ Lucas tried to swipe the device from her hands, but Esther, acting on sheer reflex, whipped it behind her back.

‘Don’t be silly.’ Lucas tried a laugh, but was clearly annoyed. ‘Come on, Esther, give it to me and I’ll take it to the lodge.’ He rolled his eyes like a parent with an impatient child.

But the atmosphere had grown stranger still. The air between them seemed to be vibrating, to the point where Esther could almost hear the thrum of it. A sense of a choice – a crossroads – was unfolding at the same time. She could hand the phone over and it – along with Lucas’s annoyance, the very last thing she wanted to invoke on this day of all days – would go away. Instead, she clenched the little mobile to her chest and moved round the desk so that it could sit between them, a bulwark. Keeping half an eye on Lucas, standing rigid, his expression darkening, she pressed the menu button. The phone was so simple, it did not have a passcode. Calls received. Messages received. But the sent messages box was empty. Wiped clean. Aware of Lucas advancing round the desk, Esther edged the other way, selecting a text at random.

‘Come on, Esther, for God’s sake. It’s not nice to snoop on someone else’s stuff.’

Fyi I still WANT you, Lucas. Now. NOW…