The lights seemed to be spinning above them; she was really pretty drunk. He took the glass out of her hand and put his other hand under his jacket, around her back. She felt the danger, the thrill. She was the ticking bomb.

‘You’re lovely, Emma Davis,’ he said. ‘I always thought that.’

This was it, the moment she had fantasized about, the moment she had manipulated. She felt her body responding to his words, to his touch, her heart dropping with a thud to the base of her womb somewhere, her body suddenly pounding with anticipation from her Brazilian bikini line to the tip of her tongue. Her mouth was moist, ready. She thought of Connie, she thought of Karl and Ness, of the fantastic search to feel alive, to feel truly present, that tangible thumping wonder of being human, his breath on her face, those dark familiar eyes.

And then she thought of Si.

‘What is it?’ he whispered, his lips close to hers.

‘I’d like to kiss you, Dougie, more than anything in the world. I wanted to kiss you thirty years ago on that grubby brown sofa. And how my seventeen-year-old self would hate me now because I’m not going to kiss you . . .’

‘You’re not?’ he said, not really believing her.

‘No.’

‘It’s just a kiss,’ he said. ‘That’s all.’

‘No . . . But thank you.’

He nodded and smiled, moving imperceptibly away from her, his eyes still shining. ‘Sensible Emma Davis.’ He sounded a bit annoyed and she was intensely glad she’d stopped this before it began. That’s right, she remembered now, he was always used to getting what he wanted.

‘I don’t know who he is but he’s a lucky guy,’ he said, handing back her glass.

So here she was on a Saturday afternoon waiting for her lucky guy to come out of his orchestra practice. A stream of musicians filed out of the church and then she saw him. He looked different to her, there amongst his ‘people’, in his element, sharing a joke with someone at the door, holding it open for others. He was an average middle-aged man, she could see that; ostensibly there was nothing remarkable about him at all and yet everything about him spoke of reassurance, dependability – he was that person you might go to in a crisis. She watched as he let the door go and then tripped on a paving stone. She was momentarily embarrassed for him, the buffoon with a bassoon. But he was her buffoon with a bassoon and she loved him. She downed the remains of her gin and tonic and left the pub, smiling at the Polish girl behind the bar, throwing a cursory nod at the addled old men.