She had resumed her packing, leaving Lucas to grapple with a peculiar blend of reassurance and discomfort. That the conversation hadn’t triggered one of the forensic what had – and hadn’t – happened between him and Moira interrogations felt like a step forward; and yet the outburst about Dylan had been hard to hear. His fiancée had every right to voice opinions on anything she chose, Lucas had reminded himself – their lives were shared territory now. And yet such remarks also made him feel very distant from her, coming as they did from a person, no matter how loved, without any comprehension of the complicating animal anxiety of loving a child, even one that behaved liked an irredeemable pillock.

The stint in the library that morning had been Heidi’s idea, to kick-start his faltering progress on the symbolism paper, she had declared in her bold way. His work should not be allowed to stop, she had counselled gravely; it mattered too much. While she was in Germany, he was to throw himself back into it. Lucas had eagerly agreed and set out his laptop and notes on his section of the big table with high hopes and real purpose. This particular library was a favourite of his, and Heidi knew that too, it being the work-space where the first draft of his Gawain book had poured into being. Yet that morning, within minutes, he had sensed that no such magic would be within reach. Re-reading his notes and opening paragraphs, he could see only lines of writing and not their meaning. His once formidable powers of concentration – Esther used to complain at the efficiency with which he shut out the world, and her – felt like a memory of someone else. Instead, his brain flip-flopped, spending nanoseconds on each of myriad subjects, none of them productive. At one point he even caught himself starting a Dylan doodle in the margin of his notebook until a flicker of attention from across the table had him flinging his fingers back to the keys.

What is a symbol?