‘With or without an ambulance?’

‘Definitely without.’

‘Can we discuss problem teenagers?’ I found I was twirling a curly lock of nylon-fibre hair with my fingers. For crying out loud. I was playing with my hair and it wasn’t even my actual hair. I dropped it.

‘We can discuss whatever you like.’

‘What did you have in mind?’

His pause was long enough to make me blush. ‘Dinner? At mine? Tonight? I promise if it rains I won’t make you sit in the dining room.’

‘You’re on.’

‘I’ll pick you up at seven thirty.’

He was just gulping down the last of his coffee when Richard appeared. He looked at Sam, then at me. I was still leaning against the bar, a few inches from him. ‘Is there a problem?’ he said.

‘No problem whatsoever,’ said Sam. When he stood up, he was a whole head taller than Richard.

A few fleeting thoughts flickered across Richard’s face, so transparent that I could see the progression of each one. Why is this paramedic here? Why is Louisa not doing something? I would like to tell Louisa off for not being obviously busy but this man is too big and there is a dynamic I do not entirely understand and I am a little bit wary of him. It almost made me laugh out loud.

‘So. Tonight.’ Sam nodded at me. ‘Keep the wig on, yes? I like you flammable.’

One of the businessmen, florid and pleased with himself, leaned back in his chair so that his stomach strained the seams of his shirt. ‘Are you going to give us the lecture about alcohol limits now?’

The others laughed.

‘No, you go ahead, gentlemen,’ Sam said, saluting them. ‘I’ll just see you in a year or two.’

I watched him head off to Departures, joined by Donna outside the newsagent. When I turned back to the bar Richard was watching me. ‘I have to say, Louisa, I don’t approve of your conducting your social life in a work setting,’ he said.

‘Fine. Next time I’ll tell him to ignore the heart attack at gate fourteen.’

Richard’s jaw tightened. ‘And what he said just then. About your wearing your wig later on. That wig is the property of Shamrock and Clover Irish Themed Bars Inc. You are not allowed to wear it in your own time.’

This time I couldn’t help it. I started to laugh. ‘Really?’

Even he had the grace to flush a little. ‘It’s company policy. It’s classified as uniform.’

‘Damn,’ I said. ‘I guess I’ll just have to buy my own Irish-dancing-girl wigs in future. Hey, Richard!’ I called, as he walked back into the office, bristling. ‘For fairness, does that mean you can’t get jiggy with Mrs Percival while wearing your polo-shirt?’

I arrived home to find no sign of Lily, other than a cereal packet on the kitchen counter and, inexplicably, a pile of dirt on the floor in the hallway. I tried her phone, got no response, and wondered how you were ever meant to find a balance between Over-anxious Parent, Normally Concerned Parent, and Tanya Houghton-Miller. And then I jumped into the shower and got ready for my date that absolutely, definitely, wasn’t a date.

It rained, the heavens opening shortly after we arrived at Sam’s field, and we were both soaked even running the short distance from his bike to the railway carriage. I stood dripping as he closed the door behind me, remembering how unpleasant the sensation of wet socks was.

‘Stay there,’ he said, brushing the drops from his head with a hand. ‘You can’t sit around in those wet clothes.’

‘This is like the opening to a really bad porn movie,’ I said. He stood very still and I realized I had actually said the words out loud. I gave him a smile that went a bit wonky.

‘Okay,’ he said, raising his eyebrows.

He disappeared into the back of the carriage and emerged a minute later with a jumper and what looked like some jogging bottoms.

‘Jake’s joggers. Freshly washed. Possibly not very porn star, though.’ He handed them to me. ‘My room’s back there if you want to get changed, or the bathroom’s through that door, if you’d prefer.’

I walked into his bedroom and closed the door behind me. Above my head the rain beat noisily on the carriage roof, obscuring the windows with a never-ending stream of water. I wondered about drawing the curtains, then remembered there was nobody to see me, other than the hens, which were huddling out of the wet, grumpily shaking drops from their feathers. I pulled off my soaked top and jeans and dried myself with the towel he’d placed with the clothes. For fun, I flashed the hens through the window, something, I observed afterwards, Lily might do. They didn’t look impressed. I held the towel to my face and sniffed it guiltily, like someone inhaling a forbidden drug. It was freshly laundered but somehow still managed to smell irrevocably male. I hadn’t breathed in a scent like it since Will. It made me feel briefly unbalanced and I put it down.

The double bed filled most of the floor space. A narrow cupboard opposite acted as a wardrobe, and two pairs of work boots were neatly stacked in the corner. There was a book on the nightstand and beside it a photograph of Sam with a smiling woman, whose blonde hair was tied up in a messy knot. She had her arm around his shoulders and was grinning at the camera. She was not supermodel beautiful, but there was something compelling about her smile. She looked like the kind of woman who would have laughed a lot. She looked like a feminine version of Jake. I felt suddenly crushingly sad for him, and had to look away before I made myself sad, too. Sometimes I felt as if we were all wading around in grief, reluctant to admit to others how far we were waving or drowning. I wondered fleetingly whether Sam’s reluctance to talk about his wife mirrored my own, the knowledge that the moment you opened the box, let out even a whisper of your sadness, it would mushroom into a cloud that overwhelmed all other conversation.

I checked myself, took a breath. ‘Just have a nice evening,’ I murmured, recalling the words of the Moving On Circle. Allow yourself moments of happiness.

I wiped the mascara smudges from under my eyes, observing in the small mirror that little could be done for my hair. Then I pulled Sam’s oversized sweater over my head, trying to ignore the weird intimacy that came from wearing a man’s clothes, pulled on Jake’s joggers and gazed at my reflection.

What do you think, Will? Just a nice evening. It doesn’t have to mean anything, right?