He feels something: a worry that he might have revealed more about himself than he intended. He shakes his head, dismissing it, and leaves the hotel.

Robin arrives at the industrial estate in good time and parks outside the self-storage facility. He hasn’t been back here since his dad died, when he and Georgia painfully and quickly packed up their father’s belongings into boxes so the house could be sold. The intention was always to come back and sort it – a thought that occurs to Robin every month as the direct debit payment goes out. Up until now he hasn’t had the inclination.

But being home, speaking to Sandra and fondly remembering his childhood, has made him feel differently. For years he hasn’t felt strong enough to dig this stuff out, but now he feels a pull. More than a curiosity; a desire to remember rather than a need to run away.

He heads inside the building. This place impressed him at the time, with the CCTV cameras and the security guard who nods at him as he goes inside. Luckily, the number of the unit has been printed on the key ring or Robin wouldn’t have had a clue, looking at the identical orange doors. He puts the key in the padlock, and he’s in.

There’s more than he remembered. Way more. Boxes are stacked on boxes, then piled on furniture. He recognises their old family dining table – why did they keep it? – chairs lined up down the side. He must, must get round to sorting all this stuff out: what a waste of money to keep paying month after month in misplaced nostalgia. Their dad wasn’t one for sentimentality; he would only keep what he needed, and the rest went in the bin. That almost went as far as their old childhood drawings, although he remembers their mum intervening. After she died, Robin expects nothing stayed.

Still, there are boxes and boxes here. Robin pulls the closest one towards him, Mum Ornaments written on the side in Georgia’s recognisable print. He opens it: their mother’s china figurines all carefully interred in bubble wrap. Even after her death, they stayed in their glass cabinet – a strange house decoration for a newly single man. But Robin knows their father never found anybody else to spend his life with, and marvels at the love that must have existed between his parents.

Even now, at the age of forty-two, it still seems impossible to Robin that he could find someone and get married. Steph was the closest he’d come to any sort of permanent attachment, and that had been over in less than a week. His thoughts turn to Liv, and the spectre of the baby hanging over him. Christ, to be a father? Was that something he could do?