Outside the pub in the sludge, just before she drew Si’s attention with her arm poised for a wave, she saw a small dark woman come to greet him. It took a moment before she recognized her: it was Savannah, Adrian’s new girlfriend. They kissed each other’s cheeks and then hovered, looking left and right as if deciding where to go, totally oblivious to Emma on the other side of the road.

She watched curiously as they ambled towards the junction. Then slowly she followed them, parallel, slightly behind. They turned right. She crossed the road and could see them enter a cosy-looking gastropub with a log fire inside. Through the glass she could observe them approach the bar where they were taken to a table with no concern for anything but each other. She went into a bike shop from where she could still see them, hiding herself behind a frisbee which turned out to be a wheel. She needn’t have bothered hiding; they were entirely wrapped up with each other, not looking out for Adrian as she had half hoped. And the longer Adrian didn’t turn up, the greater the sinking feeling in her stomach became.

Emma got a bus straight home, opened the door, turned up the heating and sat at the kitchen table with a bottle of Rioja. After a while she took her glass upstairs and ran herself a bath. The towels were damp and smelt faintly of mould so she put them in the laundry basket and went to get clean ones. She paused at the linen cupboard. At the bottom lay the wooden framework of the cot. They kept it under the pretence that someone with a baby might stay. It was easier that way. She rested her head against the cupboard and stayed like that for a long time, pressing the soft cotton of the clean towel to her nose.

After her bath she tried to get on with some work on her laptop back at the kitchen table, some unfinished Crown Court consultation work, risk assessment and management, but she soon found herself staring out into the garden. Then she stopped bothering trying to work and pulled her chair up to the glass garden door, and sat there by the radiator in the hazy sunshine, her feet up on another chair, her smooth legs extended, a glass of wine in one hand and a cigarette in the other, the ashtray on her lap, looking out at the remnants of dirty snow, awaiting his return.

‘Hi,’ he called when he eventually arrived. She turned and watched him hanging up his coat in the hall. ‘I thought you’d be out,’ he said as he came through, putting his bassoon case on the kitchen table. He was in good spirits.

‘Hi,’ she said, smiling coolly, pouring out the last of the bottle into her glass. ‘How was orchestra?’

‘Great. Did my solo. Want to hear it?’