‘What are the neighbours like?’

‘One side is a family with two young children. They seem okay. The other side is a young couple; she’s pregnant. We haven’t seen much of them, to be honest.’

‘Well, I think it’s a real find. You’d never have been able to afford anything this size in Greenwich. And you’re close to your mum now, which is what you wanted.’

Angie had nodded and looked away. She had told all of their friends that was the reason why they had moved to Finchley but it was only one of the reasons. There was another one which no one but she and Jack knew about. A decision – more of a demand really – she had made and Jack had had no choice but to agree to. At the time it had seemed like the perfect idea, an opportunity to put the past behind them and start afresh but now, in the cold, harsh reality of it all, she wasn’t so sure. Recently she had been wondering if she had overreacted. She had made a rash decision which was not appropriate to the situation and now she was paying the price.

When Alex and Simon left to go home later that day, promising to visit again soon, she had almost pleaded with them to let her come too, away from this crumbling, old, smelly house and back to her previous life. She felt abandoned, like a child whose parents were going off somewhere exciting without her. Jack and the children had waved them off and headed straight back inside without a second thought but she’d lingered on the doorstep, watching the empty street long after they had gone. She looked up and down Pemberton Road and wondered if it would ever feel like home and then scolded herself for being so negative. I’m just tired after a long week, she told herself. I need a good night’s sleep and it will all seem so much better in the morning.

Since then she had been determined to be more positive, especially now that she knew the children had gone off happily to their new school. She turned to her computer and tried to concentrate on preparing for her next meeting but her mind kept drifting. She thought about Jack at home, chatting away to the builders like they were old friends, making them a cup of tea, probably dishing out the expensive biscuits she’d bought from Harrods for her mother, and felt a familiar pull in her heart. She loved that man, sometimes so much that it frightened her.

They had met at university in Durham. He was captain of the football team, the one who all the girls swooned after and then wept over when he lost interest. The sort of boy you’d heard of before you’d even met him. They were on the same law course and after sitting next to her in a lecture one day, he seemed to take a shine to her. Not in a romantic sense back then, more in a kindred spirit kind of way. Jack was intelligent but everyone assumed that he was a bit of a jock and he didn’t do himself any favours by acting like one. But with Angie, he told her over coffee a few months after they met, he felt different. He liked talking with her about the meaty stuff, as he called it – politics, history and religion. He seemed to seek her out, appearing alongside her as she walked to lectures or sitting next to her when she was studying in the library.