‘I don’t know, I didn’t count.’

I turned to face him. ‘Were you in a relationship with her?’

‘No – I mean –’ he looked to the ceiling to avoid my eyes – ‘we were seeing each other, but we weren’t together.’

‘When did you start seeing each other?’

‘I don’t know exactly.’

‘Max.’

‘Maybe a month after we finished?’

We finished was such a dishonest retelling of how we’d ended, implying consent and communication, but now was not the time to debate wording.

‘How did you meet her?’

‘Linx.’

‘Did you delete me as a match? Because when I redownloaded it, you weren’t there.’

‘I don’t know. Maybe. I think I probably didn’t want to see when you’d last been online because I didn’t want to think of you dating again.’

‘Who was this woman?’

‘Her name was Amy.’

‘What does she do?’

‘She’s temping at the moment.’

‘How old is she?’

He paused.

‘Twenty-three.’

I did a silent calculation in my head, ready to weaponize against him when the time called for it. Fourteen years.

‘And she finished with you, so you decided to come back to trusty old me? The service station you can pull into for a break.’

‘Nina,’ he said, kissing my forehead. ‘No. You couldn’t be more wrong.’

‘I don’t understand why you started seeing someone immediately after me if what you were scared of was commitment. Your reason for vanishing would make sense if you then went on some sex spree.’

‘I just needed to distract myself so I didn’t think about you. And I can’t do sex sprees, so I accidentally fell into something regular with someone.’

‘How did it end?’

‘I finished with her.’

‘By which you mean you “deleted” her?’

‘No,’ he said, somewhat irritably. ‘We ended amicably. I told her I was in a very confused place and she understood.’

‘All these women who end up as the collateral damage of your confusion, Max. What are you so confused about?’

‘I’m not confused any more,’ he said, gripping me tighter.

We got into bed just as the sky was turning the lilac-blue of predawn.

‘Tell me again why you stopped talking to me,’ I said as we faced each other, our heads on the pillows. We spoke softly, as if trying not to wake anyone else up. ‘And don’t speak abstractly or philosophically. Tell me, clearly, why.’

‘I knew that I wanted to commit to you, but I was scared to. Committing to you meant looking at the kind of life I really want. And I wasn’t ready to. I was a coward.’

‘And how do I know the same thing won’t happen again?’

‘Because I know I don’t want to be without you now.’

‘You have to promise me you’ll never, ever disappear again.’

‘I promise,’ he said, using his knuckles to gently stroke my cheek. ‘I fucked up once and I’ve learnt my lesson. I don’t care how long it takes to re-earn your trust.’

I closed my eyes, failing to will myself to sleep. ‘I tried to speak to you, sometimes. At night, when I got into bed. That’s really properly desperate behaviour. That’s someone who’s lost it. I’d concentrate really hard and try to send you messages. But I don’t suppose you ever heard from me.’

‘I’m here now,’ he said. ‘Nina, I’m here now.’

Our breathing slowed in tandem. I heard the tinkling morning call of the blackbirds outside my window.

‘Have you really missed me? Or have you missed how I made you feel?’ My body felt cold and my head felt light, the prelude to unconsciousness. I heard the lethargic murmur of his voice.

‘They’re the same things.’

Max stayed every night for a week. We talked – about what we had been together and what we had been apart. The talking was not charged with emotion but logic – the conversations felt like a safety measure. Two dignitaries meeting after global disaster, analysing the chaos and its after-effects, discussing preventative measures. Our conversations were tinged with a new-found sincerity which I found exhausting but essential if I were to ever trust him again. We made a promise to be as honest with each other as possible – no matter how uncomfortable it might feel. I warned him that his actions had left me uncharacteristically anxious – that I associated him with pain and precariousness, that it would take time for me to relax back into our relationship. I told him I wanted reassurance without asking for it, as much time as was necessary and allowance for anger and interrogation when I needed it. He said he understood, that he would feel the same and that I was entitled to whatever I wanted. As long as I’d try to trust him again.

He told me more about Amy. He told me how surface-level and tenuous their connection had been and I hated myself for how comforting I found the comparison between us, like we were contestants on a dating show of women competing to win one worthy bachelor. I hated myself even more when we laughed about the grimy graduate house-share she lived in and her love of bottomless Buck’s Fizz brunches and the fact she had never heard of John Major. I informed him that the embarrassment was not that she hadn’t heard of a man who became a member of parliament in the late seventies, but the fact he was romantically involved with a girl who was born the same year as the Spice Girls’ first number one.

I told him about Angelo’s knife collection, Joe’s wedding, Lola’s first love, mine and Katherine’s fall-out. He read the new chapters of my book. I updated him on Dad’s waning health, but briefly and sparing any detail but the necessities. I still couldn’t talk about Dad in any real depth, or in the context of emotion rather than practicality, to anyone. Gwen was the closest thing to a confidante, and even then, when she asked in our many phone conversations how I was, all I could manage was: ‘a bit sad’. I wanted to open up to Max about it – I craved his comfort and advice – but I found the visits home to be increasingly distressing and I wanted to keep them separate to the rest of my life. The only way I had managed to not think all day every day about my dad and his brain – his beautiful, big brain being unassembled and laid in front of him like flat-pack furniture – was the fact that no one knew the details of it. So, no one thought to ask me about it.

In the weeks that followed the night I’d found Max on my doorstep, we talked about things we’d never spoken of before. There was a gentle attentiveness to us – we were less eager to make each other laugh, his bravado quietened, his swagger softened. I was more myself than I ever had been – uninterested in the pursuit of retaining his attention. He told me he loved me, prudently and sporadically, keen to prove he was being thoughtful; that he wouldn’t frighten himself with his own extremity again. I kept a running tally of when he said it. Once, whispered in my ear on the tube during morning rush hour as we were surrounded by crotches and armpits and drowned in garish light. Another time during a particularly bad hangover when we were eating chicken nuggets in bed. Another time as we queued for drinks in the pub, when I asked him if he wanted pork scratchings. I often said it back, but never said it first. I pressed the home button on his phone when he was out of the room to see Linx notifications or messages from girls – signs of a secret life that I still suspected he harboured. There was never anything there but the background photo of his car.

I was unused to his presence, which continued to feel like intrusion as well as security. I woke up every morning and checked my phone hoping for a message from him, as I had done for months, and in a half-asleep state would feel disappointment. Then I’d turn to see him lying asleep next to me – a pile of sinewy limbs and golden curly hair. I had the flesh and blood version of Max, but I still felt like I was being haunted by the virtual one.