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    “Oh Neil, for heaven’s sake, how many times. Dad doesn’t –”
    “… some macho, six foot, alpha male provider. Like … thingy. Andrew.”
    “ Andrew ? Wait, where’s this come from?” Jane sat up.
    “Oh nowhere. Forget it. Forget it. I was just thinking about him today,” I said. I perched myself on the chair by the desk. “That Sting poster he helped me hang when we shared halls. I’ve had an offer on it. Not much but …” I burped a stale beer burp, head thick and cloudy. “Andrew was much more your dad’s idea of husband material though, don’t you think?”
    “Hairy Andrew, eco-warrior? With those chunky jumpers and wounded ducklings? Hardly Mr Wall Street, was he?”
    “No, but he was a … provider. All that Viking, Nordic, outdoorsy hunter gatherer … stuff.”
    “ You’re a –”
    “Big shoulders and that long flowy hair that all the girls tried to play with. Mr Sensitive New Man with the wounded soul. That bloody … Arran sweater and his save the seal cubs. You could have had him if you’d wanted him, y’know?”
    “ Andrew Benjamin ?”
    “If you’d wanted him . Instead. He had a crush on you.”
    “Andrew? He got us together. There was no … We were friends .”
    “Did you know about the poems?”
    “Oh he didn’t have –”
    “Those red spiral notebooks he used to always carry. I shared a room with him.”
    “Then why didn’t he … ?” Jane flapped and then stopped, shrugging the memories off, sweeping thoughts away. “Look, what’s brought all this on suddenly?”
    “Nothing, I … Nothing.” I shook myself, chugging a little more beer over the sick ache in my stomach. “I’m being stupid.”
    “You are. He and I were friends. We all were. A team,” Jane said. She suddenly remembered something. “Oh, talking of Dad, there’s a letter from his accountant I think. On the desk there. Came this morning. And something from the bank it looks like.”
    “Bank?” I squeaked, covering it with a belchy cough. I spun the chair. There were two envelopes propped against the silver photo-frame.
    “Shall I do your back?” Jane said, standing, waggling the jar of oil. “It’ll help you relax.”
    “Uhm, no. No I’m … er fine. Should we look in on Lana?” I stood shruggily, edging around to block Jane’s view of the desk, wiping my oily hands and ruining another towel in exactly the way Jane had told me not to.
    She gathered the pillows and gave me a kiss. I smiled weakly and watched as she plucked the monitor from the floor and ambled in her loose tracksuit bottoms, cooing down the short hall to what was now either a study with a cot jammed in it or a nursery with a computer jammed in it.
    Ignoring the pink cardboard ‘ £ 15’ star Blu-tacked to the desk, I lifted the bank envelope. Plain and business-like, my name peeked guiltily from the little window. Heart thudding, I tore it open and scanned through it, throat tight.
    Oh Christ.
    “Everything all right?” Jane said, appearing in the doorway, Lana on her hip.
    “Oh, just a statement. Everything’s fine,” I lied, stuffing it in my jeans. “Everything’s just fine.”
     
    Half an hour later, by the dim glow of a plastic caterpillar night-light , I was skulking in the nursery. Hunched over the rickety, flat-pack computer desk in the corner, another beer thudding about my temples, a freshly changed Lana dozed contentedly in her cot behind me. Fists closed, mouth open, her small room smelled of brushed cotton and nappies.
    What the hell was I doing, dragging up old university memories to pummel Jane with? It was all getting out of hand. The fear, the worry. Knowing it was only a matter of days before our world was picked up, turned upside down and had everything we knew shaken out of it by men in overalls.
    Pushing thoughts aside, I fetched the Overstreet guide from the bedroom, picking up my satchel from the hall on the way back. In the lounge I could hear Jane on the phone with her dad,