I knew exactly what it would be like. He’d meet me every evening after work, and we’d stroll through parks under autumnal trees, and hold hands across the table in candlelit bars, and cook proper dinners for Dad, and visit galleries, and linger outside jewellery shops, and never stop talking and laughing. I’d buy myself some better clothes, and we’d look like a couple in an advert. It sounds banal when I spell it out like that, but in my mind it was beautiful.

Silence followed my invitation and I thought he was with me, peering down the same kaleidoscope as one scene shifted and tumbled to the next. I closed my eyes and pressed against his back, but the rhythm of his breathing had altered. The rise and fall had become jagged and choppy.

“Cory?”

He didn’t resist when I turned him round and held him at arm’s length, nor when my fingers probed the gleaming patches on his face, as if I were in any doubt they were tears. My hand fell away and I didn’t know what to say. I felt as hot and weepy as an overwhelmed child. Whatever this situation was—good or bad—it was Too Much.

“Don’t cry.” I said, half laughing. “Why are you crying?”

“Something happened this morning.”

I shook my head slightly.

“You don’t understand,” he said.

Was that the hint of an accusation? I began to protest—but stopped. Let him have his say.

“What happened this morning?”

“My mother . . .” He turned back to the window. I put my arms around him as before, but cautiously, in case he snarled or snapped. I laid my cheek lightly against his back, without leaning in, and rode the swell of movement as he wiped his arms across his face.

“She collapsed. I had to phone for an ambulance, and they came, and they were here for ages. Then they took her off to the hospital, but I didn’t go with her because I was waiting for you—”

His voice failed, and I tightened my hold around his chest. You might have mentioned this before, I thought uncharitably, although I didn’t say it. I wasn’t up for a fight; that wasn’t how our story went.

“I can’t go back with you to London,” he said angrily. “I can’t go anywhere.”

I held still as the fairy lights came on in the trees—not the pale, starry ones I remembered from my cousin’s wedding, but gaudy ones that flashed on and off, at hectic speed, in all the colours of the rainbow. Their reflections turned the pond into a cauldron that fizzed with reds and greens and blues.