Jared had nodded in an encouraging way, and Michael had looked at him, trying to imagine how he’d carried nineteen stone when he now looked so healthy and muscular – as he had to for the job he did. You wouldn’t be employed in a leisure-centre gym if you were overweight, and yet that could never be a stated reason for rejection. The employer couldn’t say, ‘Sorry, Jared – you’re way too fat to work here.’ That wouldn’t be allowed, though it would be the truth. ‘You can’t walk round in shorts and vest, man! – you’ll set a bad example. We need thin people, so you’re not on the team: we’re not picking you.’

Michael found he was smiling again, because the sun was trying to break through and suddenly summer showed every sign of returning. The woman next to him would soon have to remove a layer.

Jared had lost weight, and shown real interest in Michael’s lifestyle. For most of the hour Michael’s habits had been his only focus. He had felt almost tearfully grateful as he left the library, for the wedding had been out there on the horizon for so long, swaying like a tornado. It had been a smudge in the air coming slowly closer, until he could feel the temperature changing and the wind on his face. He had to deal with it, somehow: three and a half years of fiction had to be confronted. The wedding could not happen, and all the investment… it was blasted away as the dreaming came to an abrupt and sudden end. He’d got off the train, as it were: he’d turned back. Having said yes, he was about to say no – and everything would stop.

He had written to her the same afternoon: Dear Amy.

He wrote on an old laptop, and then printed the document in the library’s study section, horrified by the devastation a single sheet of paper was likely to cause. Would the pain turn into relief? It would do, in the end, because he was only confirming feelings she must have shared. They didn’t know each other: they’d spent the years not getting to know one another. She couldn’t know him, if only because she had no idea what he was about to do, and if she hadn’t anticipated the letter then that proved the point: they were strangers.

They were strangers, and he had come to dread being with her. She was a good person, and he was a liar. They had worked on the whole nonsense together, planning and smiling – and what did it take to smash it all down? Twenty minutes of typing.