Most annoyingly of all, Emma seems to be relishing this newfound independence from Dexter. He feels as if he’s being taught a lesson, as if he’s being slapped round the face with her newfound contentment. ‘You can’t expect people to build their lives around you, Dexter,’ she has told him, gloatingly, and now they’ve argued once again, and all because she won’t be there in the studio for the live broadcast of his show.

‘What do you want me to do, cancel Oliver!because you’re on telly?’

‘Can’t you come along afterwards?’

‘No! It’s miles!’

‘I’ll send a car!’

‘I need to talk to the kids afterwards, the parents—’

‘Why do you?’

‘Dexter, be reasonable, it’s my job!’

And he knows he’s being churlish, but it would help to see Emma in the audience. He’s a better person when she’s around, and isn’t that what friends are for, to raise you up and keep you at your best? Emma is his talisman, his lucky charm, and now she won’t be there and his mother won’t be there and he will wonder why he’s doing it at all.

After a long shower he feels a little better and pulls on a light v-neck cashmere sweater worn with no shirt, some pale linen drawstring trousers worn with no underpants, steps into a pair of Birkenstocks and bounds down to the paper-shop to read the TV previews and check that Press and Publicity have been doing their job. The newsagent smiles at his celebrity customer with a due sense of occasion, and Dexter trots home with his arms full of newspapers. He feels better now, full of trepidation but exhilarated too, and while the espresso machine is warming up, the phone rings once again.

Even before the machine picks up something tells him that it will be his father and that he will screen the call. Since his mother’s death the calls have become more frequent and more excruciating: stuttering, circular and distracted. His father, the self-made man, now seems defeated by the simplest of tasks. Bereavement has unmanned him and on Dexter’s rare visits home he has seen him staring helplessly at the kettle as if it were some alien technology.

‘So — talk to me!’ says the idiot on the machine.

‘Hello, Dexter, it’s your father here.’ He uses his ponderous phone voice. ‘I am just phoning to say good luck for your television show tonight. I will be watching. It’s all very exciting. Alison would have been very proud.’ There’s a momentary pause as they both realise that this probably isn’t true. ‘That’s all I wanted to say. Except. Also, don’t pay any attention to the newspapers. Just have fun. Goodbye. Goodbye—’

Don’t pay any attention to the what? Dexter grabs at the phone.

‘—Goodbye!’

His father has gone. He has set the timer on the explosives then hung up, and Dexter looks across at the pile of news papers, now full of menace. He tightens the drawstring on his linen trousers and turns to the TV pages.

When Emma steps from the bathroom, Ian is on the phone and she can tell from the flirty, larky tone of his voice that he is talking to her mother. Her boyfriend and Sue have been conducting a borderline affair ever since they met in Leeds at Christmas: ‘Lovely sprouts, Mrs M’ and ‘Isn’t this turkey moist?’ It’s electric, the mutual longing between them and all Emma and her dad can do is tut and roll their eyes.

She waits patiently for Ian to tear himself away. ‘Bye, Mrs M. Yeah I hope so too. It’s just a summer cold, I’ll pull through. Bye, Mrs M. Bye.’ Emma takes the receiver as Ian, mortally ill once more, shuffles back to bed.

Her mother is flushed and giddy. ‘Such a lovely lad. Isn’t he a lovely lad?’

‘He is, Mum.’

‘I hope you’re looking after him.’

‘I’ve got to go to work now, Mum.’

‘Now, why was I calling? I’ve completely forgotten why I was calling.’

She was calling to talk to Ian. ‘Was it to wish me good luck?’

‘Good luck for what?’

‘The school production.’

‘Oh yes, good luck for that. Sorry we can’t come down to see it. It’s just London’s so expensive. .’

Emma ends the phone-call by pretending that the toaster is on fire then goes to see the patient, sweltering beneath the duvet in an attempt to ‘sweat it out’. Part of her is vaguely aware of failing as a girlfriend. It’s a new role for her, and she sometimes finds herself plagiarising ‘girlfriend behaviour’: holding hands, cuddling up in front of the television, that kind of thing. Ian loves her, he tells her so, if anything a little too often, and she thinks she may be able to love him back, but it will take some practice. Certainly she intends to try and now, in a self-conscious gesture of sympathy, she curls herself around him on the bed.