Peter had quite enjoyed that weekend. He had ordered takeaways, watched the tennis, and painted the spare room indigo, all without any protestations. He wondered now as he floated about the concourse of Victoria station, how Stephanie would react to this. She had wanted mauve because she said it was good feng shui, he wanted indigo simply because it wasn’t mauve.

     He stared up at the clock above the departure board.

     ‘Rather defeats the point of it being called the Gatwick Express,’ he muttered to himself. And he decided to take a breath of fresh air.

     Just as he walked onto the station forecourt, a horde of people burst out of the Victoria Palace Theatre, and Peter was sure he saw Simon. A man with ginger hair, about the same length, wearing the same sort of jacket as he had worn in the car in the Millennium summer. There was a badge in the same place – pinned just at the tip of the breast pocket. He was with a blonde girl of about six; she was bouncing merrily towards the traffic lights as she tugged at his leather arm. And then a bus shot past them and they became submerged in the crowd.

     Peter turned away. It could not have been Simon, for a tear quivered in the corner of his eye. Now he did not want to see Stephanie at all, not even for the irony. They both knew there would be no passionate reunion, no gallant carrying of luggage, and certainly no interest in stories from Norway. Peter had been there himself – met the parents, met the lodger, and the dog. He had seen all of Oslo and Trondheim, and ­­the fjords, and the Urnes stave church. No: they would speak only of the week ahead – what upcoming meetings they had, or what to have for dinner that night, for they had few other things left in common.

     Perhaps later he should hug her, for she was his wife after all.

Stephanie flushed the toilet, and watched the tissues swirl out of sight, taking with them her upset and mascara. She breathed in deeply. The driver announced they were approaching London Victoria, and she panicked. A thousand thoughts flooded her mind; the most dominant of all was about the cold week ahead: the cold shoulders, cold dinners and cold baths.