But something was wrong here. Fry wasn’t going to be around after today. She had a whole new career of her own to look forward to.

‘So that’s your parting gift,’ he said. ‘When you finally leave Edendale, you want to make sure that you leave me feeling in your debt.’

Fry dropped her gaze to the floor. ‘Something like that, I suppose. Yes, something like that.’

Cooper was feeling very strange. Perhaps it was the alcohol. The first real drink he’d had for months. Well, the first time he’d felt relaxed enough to enjoy it. It was odd that he’d spent days working out how he could get away from Fry and now he discovered he didn’t want her to leave.

‘Are you really going, Diane?’ he said.

‘I’m already gone.’

‘You can’t be quite gone,’ said Cooper, putting down his glass.

‘Why not?’

‘Because I’ve still got your TV in the boot of my car.’

‘So you have.’

‘You’ll need it for the new apartment in Nottingham. You’ve moved everything else. That old place at Grosvenor Avenue must be empty now.’

‘Pretty much. But we can’t move it tonight,’ said Fry. ‘You’ve been drinking.’

‘So have you.’

‘True.’

Fry gazed at him. And it felt as if everything that had ever passed between them over the years dissolved in that moment, in that one look. Cooper’s doubts about Fry fell away. For the first time he found himself looking past the brittle façade and seeing the real person underneath, vulnerable and lonely. Fry was like a 3D picture, baffling at first. But if you stared at it for long enough, your eyes slipped through the surface to a different focus and found something surprising that took your breath away.

‘So, Diane…’

‘So let’s leave the TV where it is,’ she said. ‘We’re not going anywhere tonight.’

Cooper was awake early next morning. Quietly, he opened the back door into the garden behind Welbeck Street.

A strong wind had been blowing from the north all night. He walked out of his flat into a world of bare branches and swathes of dead leaves covering the ground. So that was it, he thought. Autumn was truly over. Nothing could stop the winter now.

For a while he sat on a garden chair and watched the sun rise. Fry had been right that a death could provide a bridge to the future. It meant a new start in so many ways. But nothing was quite so simple, was it? It was all very well trying to look ahead, to think about what might still be to come. But it was all daydreams, a lot of wishful thinking. Whatever you did, there was no escaping your fate. No one had any idea what the future would bring.

Cooper gazed up at the hills around Edendale, the ever-changing landscape of the Peak District, the countryside he’d grown up in. The colours of those hills altered season by season, month by month. They might look bare and bleak now, but new life was just below the surface, waiting to burst through again, if it was only given half a chance.

Yes, winter always ended. And, if you could look far enough into the future, spring was just around the corner.