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The crack between him and his family had been there so long he’d stopped noticing the width of it. Gemma’s messages didn’t close it, but they made it feel less permanent, more fissure than canyon, something a person could step across if they timed it right.

He texted Nic again. Just: I’ve joined a five-a-side on Saturdays. Hired a lad to cover the shop so I can actually have weekends. Having some downtime has been good for me.

The double blue ticks appeared within minutes. The reply took two days.

That’s good Ruari. The girls have been asking about you.

Ruari answered within seconds: I’d love to see them when you’re ready.

Nic sent a thumbs-up emoji.

The five-a-side ran out of a WhatsApp group called PORTOBELLO LEGENDS (OVER 30s ONLY, NO EXCEPTIONS, DAVE). They played at a scuffed Astroturf pitch behind the leisure centre, a rotating cast of blokes whose combined tactical awareness wouldn’t have troubled a Conference South reserve side.

His knee twinged if he planted too hard on the turn, and anything resembling a sprint was out of the question. He played in midfield where he could read the pitch, pick the pass and deliver it before his body had to do anything more ambitious than jog. The touch was still there. His left foot knew where a teammate would be before the teammate did, the ball leaving his boot on a clean line. His brain saw the game three seconds ahead.

The gap between what he saw and what his legs could execute was the grief he’d spent six years pouring whisky over. On the pitch, with the March air sharp in his lungs and a postman called Darren screaming for a through ball he was never going to reach, the grief was still there, and it didn’t take him down. He played within the body he had.

There was no crowd and no cameras, just a few blokes splitting the cost of pitch hire and arguing about the offside rule over pints at the Elgin afterwards, where Ruari ordered a lime and soda and nobody made a thing of it.

He nursed it through the post-match debrief while Darren insisted his goal had been intentional and not a mishit cross that had caught the wind. The conversation went on around Ruari and asked nothing of him but the occasional nod and a well-timed “bollocks” when Darren’s account of his own performance exceeded the bounds of plausibility.

The lads bought rounds, and when someone pushed a pint towards him out of habit, he pushed it back with two fingers and said, “No thanks.”

He drove to Birmingham on a Tuesday. Tuesdays were quiet at the shop, and Raf could handle it on his own once the baking was done.

His mum’s house in Bordesley Green looked exactly the way it had looked for thirty years. The privet hedge needed trimming. Ruari clocked it as he walked up the path and planned another trip round to take care of it.

She opened the door before he knocked. “Kettle’s on,” she said, already heading for the kitchen.

She had biscuits out on the worktop, golden and crumbly and dusted with caster sugar that clung to his fingers when he picked one up. His mum’s shortbread was what had started Ruari baking, though he’d never quite been able to match the texture of hers. Mum’s crumbled. His snapped. He’d tried adjusting the butter ratio, the oven temperature, the resting time, and none of it made a blind bit of difference, because whatever she did to them happened between the lines of the recipe, in the part that couldn’t be written down.

She let him talk about the bakery, listening with her hands around her mug, eyes on him.

“The girls are doing well,” she said, between his account of his disastrous experimentation with anchovies and olives, and his plans for the Easter menu. “Lily’s reading chapter books now. Thick ones.”

“She’s six.”

“She’s sharp.” His mum took a sip of tea. “Gets it from Nic.”

The blind in the kitchen window had come off its bracket at one end, hanging at an angle that let a stripe of afternoon light fall across the worktop. Ruari found a screwdriver in the drawer by the fridge and had it fixed in three minutes. His mum watched him do it without comment, then ran the blind up and down twice to check it sat true.

“Right,” she said, satisfied.

He drove home down the M40 in the dark, the shortbread tin on the passenger seat and Radio 4 filling the car.

The following Tuesday, he was back. The week after that, again. Each visit ran longer than the last. The first had been ninety minutes and a cup of tea; the fourth stretched past dinner into the evening, his mum reheating a shepherd’s pie she’d made that morning. He sorted the privet, fixed a dripping tap in the bathroom, rehung a picture in the hallway that had been crooked since his dad had knocked it with a stepladder the Christmas before he died, and had seconds of the pie.

The conversations circled closer each time: the bakery, then the five-a-side, then Gemma’s new job, then Nic and the girls.

On his fifth visit, she walked him to the door the way she always did, and then her hand caught his sleeve before he was through it.

“Come on a Sunday,” she said. “I want to feed you a proper Sunday dinner. Nic’s bringing the girls this week.”

Ruari kissed her on the cheek. “’Course,” he said.

✦ ✧ ✦

Nic’s girls were behind her legs before Ruari had made it through the front door.