Robin sped along the empty road and wondered if he might recognise anyone. He’d left Patch in the bath, still wittering about dead dogs, and just before he set off he’d texted Mark, the history teacher, to say that everything was going well: he had cooked dinner, his daughter was coping, the arrangements were underway. Things with Mark weren’t serious and Robin was unsure whether he would reply – although he probably would, the mother of Robin’s child was dead – but Robin wanted to feel connected, however tenuously, to another adult. If his daughter was going to carry on drinking and babbling about dead dogs he needed a co-pilot, even if that co-pilot only existed in the form of incomplete, poorly punctuated texts sent at irregular intervals. That’s what texting was all about, having a cast of supporting characters stored in an app in your phone, people who reassured you that you were doing a stellar job. Robin wasn’t looking for more than that. He turned on the radio, pushing the car above fifty.…