The lift took a long time to come. James leaned against the wall.

“Do you want to know the funny thing?” he said. “I got everything I wanted in London. The big firm. The flat in Chelsea. I got engaged to a barrister. We had a wedding booked at a castle.”

“What happened?”

“The firm merged. Half the partners were let go. Including me. She called off the wedding a month later. Said she'd ‘expected a different trajectory.'”

He laughed, but there was nothing funny in it.

“Turns out she thought I was too ordinary.”

I didn't say anything.

“I came back to Edinburgh three months ago,” James went on. “I'm staying in my parents' spare room. I've applied for nineteen jobs. This was the best one. I thought it was my way back.”

He looked out of the window, at the blue cranes.

“I walked under that crane this morning,” he said quietly. “I didn't even look up.”

The lift doors opened.

He stepped inside. Then he held the door with his hand.

“You got lucky, Holly,” he said. “Right place, right time.”

I thought about two hundred church halls. Five years of evenings. My dad's empty docks. “Maybe,” I said. “Luck is what happens when ordinary people keep turning up.”

He let go of the door.