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children’s cat, but Luke was his idol.
    ‘He’s a one-man cat,’ I said, taking two coffee cups down from the dresser. They were handmade, painted in red and yellow and with matching saucers. Relief was making me chatty. Thecold clutching in my stomach—the drowning nightmare—had meant nothing, after all. I rambled on about the weather and the garden, and Kate and Owen. Luke stood watching me, dripping rainwater onto the tiles.
    ‘Chop-chop,’ I nagged, pushing him towards the stairs. ‘You’ll catch your death. How come you set out so early?’
    ‘I lost the keys to the flat.’
    I gaped. ‘ Sorry? Don’t you have a spare set?’
    ‘They’re here. So I went to Paddington and waited for the first train.’
    It didn’t make sense. ‘But . . . you’ve surely not been sitting in Paddington station all night?’
    ‘No, not sitting. I walked around.’
    ‘All night, in the storm? Why didn’t you just go to Simon and Carmela’s place? They’d have put you up. For heaven’s sake—you could have phoned me. I’d have driven in. You know I would.’
    ‘Yes, I know that.’ He seemed to retreat into the hollows of his eyes. I watched him, and that aching chill returned. I’d seen him like this before. It was as though he were being tortured: silently, privately.
    ‘What were you thinking, as you walked all night?’ I asked.
    He didn’t answer.
    ‘Darling man.’ Sliding around the edge of the island, I touched his face with the palms of my hands, turning it to face mine. ‘Is it back? You know these low times always pass. Why on earth didn’t you phone me?’
    ‘I was making a choice,’ he said. ‘I have made it. And now I have to tell you something.’
    The room faded away. There was only Luke, ghost-faced and soaking wet. I remembered the day my father turned up here—standing pretty much where Luke was now—and told me they’d found a shadow on his lung. I’d wanted to weep at the determined optimism in his voice: It’s not a one-way ticket nowadays, the Big C. They can do amazing things with chemo. Six months later, weburied him. My mother didn’t even come to the funeral. Death’s powerful, but it couldn’t dent her bitterness—though why she’d been bitter when it was she who ran off with somebody else, I never understood. She outlived Dad by ten years before the Big C got her, too.
    ‘Are you ill?’ I asked now.
    ‘No.’ Luke gave a sniff of laughter. Well, not really laughter. ‘Sick, perhaps. Yes. People will certainly say I’m sick.’
    I breathed again. Not cancer, then. Not some other terminal illness. Anything else could be borne. ‘Are you having an affair?’
    ‘No. No! I’d never . . . there’s never been anyone but you.’
    I had no idea what was coming. I really thought it was something quite trivial. Perhaps he’d lost his shirt in some dodgy investment? Well, so be it. Money isn’t the most important thing in life.
    ‘Sit down,’ I said, as I carried our coffee to the table. ‘Tell me what’s going on. A problem shared . . .’
    It’s seen some action, our kitchen table. For over a quarter of a century, our lives have revolved around its blue-painted legs and scrubbed oak top. It’s seen children’s baptisms and birthday parties; it’s hosted flaming family rows and teenage revels and endless games of Monopoly. Its face bears the honourable scars of hot saucepans, Kate’s henna, and Simon’s early attempts at soldering. It knows us all, very well.
    Luke didn’t sit down. ‘You’ll be revolted,’ he said.
    ‘Try me! Whatever it is can’t be so terrible, if you aren’t ill and you’re not having an affair. Is it financial? Have you lost our pension? Our house?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Has Bannermans gone bust?’
    ‘No. No.’ He held out his hands, palms downward, as though trying to suppress my guesses. ‘It’s who I am. I have to tell you who I am.’
    ‘You look like Luke Livingstone to me.’
    ‘Yes, I look like him. But I’m