‘Bryan Ferry,’ he said. ‘Your company is named after his song, isn’t it? “Angel Eyes”.’

I shook my head. He had it completely wrong. He had everything wrong about me. I thought of my father and his old vinyl record collection.

‘You’ve got the wrong “Angel Eyes”,’ I said. ‘We’re named after the Frank Sinatra song. Two different songs, both “Angel Eyes”. We’re the Sinatra song.’

‘Ah.’ He frowned at the tickets on my desk. Then he remembered his other gift.

It was a telephone, still in the box but with the cellophane wrapper torn off, as if it had been opened and charged.

‘It’s in case you ever need a friend. Or something more.’

‘No thank you,’ I said. ‘I’ve already got one. A friend, I mean. And a phone. Listen – James – I don’t think you understand. You need to get this into your head. I’ve already got a life – and you are not a part of it.’

‘And I don’t think you understand, Tara. You’ve got a new life now – and it includes me.’

I watched him through the glass walls as he left. He smiled at them all – Michael and Mary and Skyla, carrying drinks from the cafe – Caine gave them his wide white smile dialled all the way up and all three of them smiled back, totally charmed.

I looked at my desk. He had taken the tickets for the wrong “Angel Eyes”.

But he had left me the phone.

10

Tara

‘Who was he?’ I asked Ginger.

We were in the kitchen at home. She quickly shot a look back at the living room where Christian and Spike were scrolling through restaurant menus on Christian’s laptop.

‘The boys can’t hear us,’ I said. ‘Who was he?’

‘Who?’ she said.

‘The guy,’ I said. ‘You know, the one you had an affair with.’

We both stared at the men in the living room. Before Marlon was born, the four of us would go out to restaurants two or three times a week, but this had been reduced to one takeaway a week delivered to our place. We took turns in choosing. Tonight it was Christian’s turn.

‘Not Thai again,’ Spike was saying.

‘Tara likes Thai,’ Christian said.

Marlon and Buddy sprawled on the carpet beside them, the boy’s hand running through the soft fur on the dog’s belly, the dog with its head thrown back in dreamy ecstasy. Ginger’s voice was so soft I had to lean in close.

‘You never met him,’ she said.

‘Somebody from the gym?’

‘No, I didn’t meet him at work.’

‘And how did it start? How did it end?’

‘Why do you want to know all this stuff?’

‘Because you understand what happened to me. You’ve been through it. And I can’t talk to anyone else.’

She sighed. ‘Spike and I hit a rough patch early on. I know these things are meant to happen when a marriage has been going for years but that’s not what happened to us. We had only been married for eighteen months or so. I thought at the time that maybe Spike and I were built for honeymoons. We liked all that – the passion, the drama, the excitement, the mad sex. But when the fever wore off, it took some time to adjust to marriage. Bills and bins. And there was someone I had known before.’