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said Emma Waters, one of the chief correspondents and another co-presenter, looking up from her screen where she was probably doing her Ocado shop. Emma was an old friend of Hannah’s and there was no mistaking the malicious glint in her eye.
    ‘Great, Emma, never better. Excited at the prospect of a breath of fresh air in this place.’ Luke decided he’d swipe back. ‘Love your jacket, by the way. My wife was saying the other night that green really suits you.’
    He carried on to the gents, hugely cheered. One of Emma’s pet peeves was the way, even after she’d interviewed the prime minister, the only thing viewers seemed to register about her was what she was wearing and whether it suited her or not. ‘Luke and Marco don’t get emails all day saying their hair’s too long,’ was her constant complaint, to which no one had an answer.
    At least I’m not a woman, thought Luke, as he always did when he really needed to count his blessings. But then, having peed, he stared in the mirror with all the consternation of a former starlet on the eve of middle age. Shit. He’d definitely lost some more hair. Since he’d had to give up on the gym – no time or money thanks to having to divide his time between two families and the alimony – he was fatter too. Worse, however, were the furrows that almost overnight had started to etch themselves into his brow like cross stitch. There was no getting away from it. At fifty-one (fifty-two in a couple of weeks, he thought with a shudder), he was beginning to look his age. Of course the make-up girls could help a lot. But they couldn’t do anything about the wrinkles and sagging, the bags under his eyes like the Austrian blinds in his ex-mother-in-law’s cottage in Dorset. It was hardly bloody surprising he looked so exhausted, given his set up. Since Clara had been born nearly two years ago, he was lucky to get about four hours sleep straight. He’d accepted that when she was first born, but the months had passed and, still, she screamed in the night.
    ‘Just leave her,’ he’d moan to Poppy. ‘That’s what Hannah did with the children. They soon learn.’
    ‘That’s cruel ,’ Poppy would retort tearfully, jiggling and cooing their bawling baby who always ended up in their bed, where she’d snuffle and snort all night long. When there’d been disturbed nights with his other three, Luke had gone into the spare room. But now there was no spare room. Sometimes he retreated to the living-room sofa, but it was fiendishly uncomfortable, too hot in summer and arctic in winter thanks to the huge picture windows with their views of the canal.
    Even on the rare nights of relative peace, Luke’s worries kept him awake: how he’d damaged his three elder children by leaving them; how much cash his two families required, especially now the kids were all at boarding school, since Hannah had insisted it was the best possible babysitting arrangement for a single mother; how Hannah, with her newly invigorated career, kept publicly attacking him. How Poppy, sweet pretty Poppy, looked lovely on his arm but how a pot plant would have made a better wife. How he could hardly be blamed for searching for ‘companionship’ elsewhere, a search which had included a brief fling with – at this point Luke would kick the sheets – Foxy Roxy, who was now one of the people who held his future in her hands.
    Why had he ended it with her? he’d think with the despair that always assailed him around four a.m. Why couldn’t he have just let it trickle on? But Luke knew why: he’d been freaked out after that time she’d left her knickers in his pocket. Envisaging a second divorce and the bailiffs coming round, Luke had called it a day with a lot of waffling about ‘It’s not you it’s me’. Foxy had appeared philosophical, but Luke knew better than almost anyone about the dangers of a woman scorned.
    But more than his faltering new marriage or his shaky career, what kept Luke awake most