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“At least,” I continued, attempting to cover my discomfort, “I don’t like seeing you upset unless it’s me you’re angry at.” I gave her a wry smile, and it brought a laugh from her lips.

I liked Nisa’s laugh. It was hearty and full of joy and it made me feel joyful too. But for some reason, she cut herself off after a couple of seconds, as though she was attempting to suppress it. She’d done a similar thing yesterday when we had been kidding around in her dining room.

“I appreciate that,” she told me, her voice unusually shy. “And sorry, because I had assumed you didn’t care and that was why you left.” She took a breath. “That was also why I wasn’t exactly welcoming when I bumped into you just there. I’m not in the kind of place where I can hide how I’m feeling and I thought seeing you would mean I’d need to put a brave face on.” She wrung her gloved hands together. “I’m not feeling that brave right now.”

The urge to put my arm around her shoulders was so strong that I actually lifted it a couple of centimeters before my brain kicked in and overruled the order sent by my heart. It might be too much and make her feel uncomfortable. After all, up until yesterday she and I had been at each other’s throats.

I settled for another small nudge. “I’m sorry if I made you think I didn’t care. That wasn’t my intention. I thought you needed space and that perhaps I wasn’t the right person to be around in that moment. For a few reasons,” I added. Her acknowledging smile gave the indication that she knew I meant both being her neighborhood enemy and also that it was my ex who was expecting her ex’s baby. It was like a bloody soap opera.

“And I’m sorry for jumping to that conclusion,” she said. That was two apologies I’d received from the NCA in twenty-​four hours. The universe I was in right now felt very different to the one I’d been in a couple of days ago.

“It just hurt, you know?” she said, her words starting to flow as she got them off her chest. “For so many reasons. Firstly, that he’s moved on at all, never mind so quickly, when I’d still been hoping that he might . . .” She blinked a couple of times in quick succession, as if attempting to keep the tears in. I could tell where that sentence had been going—​she’d been hoping that he might come back to her. Hearing her voice that desire made my chest tighten.

“Secondly,” she continued, “that he told me in a text, and also the tone of it, like I was a friend who would be as excited about their news as they were, rather than the ex he had dumped earlier this year and who . . .” She hesitated, seeming unsure whether to continue.

“Go on,” I encouraged, keeping my voice gentle the way I did with my patients.

“Who had been desperate to start a family with him but he kept putting off the idea,” she finished, every word coated in pain.

Shit. That was rough. “No wonder you’re upset.”

She glanced over, a relieved look on her face, and I could tell she was grateful for the validation.

“For what it’s worth, as an objective outsider—” I paused. “Well, partially objective, I guess . . .” I added, referring to my status as Aileen’s ex, “I thought the tone of that message was way off. And he shouldn’t have told you in a message at all. It should have been a face-to-face thing, or at least a phone call.”

She was nodding in agreement. “Did Aileen contact you yet?”

“Yeah. This morning when I picked up Dave the dog. She did a little lead-in about feeling unwell and not being up to walking him, then explained her illness was actually morning sickness. So a much gentler breaking of the news.” I glanced over. “Though I knew already, of course.”

Nisa squeezed her eyes shut. “Oh my God. I’m such an idiot. I shouldn’t have shown you that text. I put you in the exact same position as me, hearing about it so bluntly. Plus, Aileen should have been the one to tell you, not me.”

“No, no, it’s okay.” I waved a hand in reassurance. “You were shell-​shocked and I happened to be there at the wrong time. In any case, I can’t say the news affected me that much.”

“No?” she said curiously.

“Nah.” I shrugged. “Things between Aileen and I were completely dead in the water when she left. I was relieved more than anything. And then her finding someone else eased my guilt a little.”

She cocked her head to one side at my utterance of the word guilt, opening her mouth to say something. But then Dave came scampering up, sending snow flying everywhere, to present her with his stick.

“Hey,” she said, pausing to bend down and make a fuss of him. Dave accepted the attention with relish, looking up at her hopefully with his stick in his mouth.

“He wants you to throw it for him,” I told her.

“Ah, I see. Of course I will,” she added in a “such a good boy” voice. She grasped the stick and Dave relinquished it, standing poised and ready to run. Nisa tossed it a few meters ahead, and Dave was off. “Was that okay?” she asked as we continued to walk. “I’m not used to dogs, really.”

“Great job,” I told her, and absorbed the pleased expression on her face.

“By the way, why do you call him Dave the dog? Is that his formal title?”

I chuckled. “Yeah, something like that. He was a rescue dog and already called Dave so we just kept the name. But Aileen’s dad is also called Dave, so to distinguish he became Dave the dog and it kind of stuck.”

She let out a peal of laughter, though again seeming to cut herself short. Pity, I liked the way the sound danced across the snowy lane.

I got the feeling that Nisa was constantly attempting to curb her natural self, but that maybe, when she was with me, she let it out a little more. And again, perhaps that stemmed from the fact that she and I had been at loggerheads and so she didn’t feel the need to hold back with me. But why did she feel the need to censor herself in the first place?

I wanted to know the answer to that question, but we were on new ground with our recent ceasefire, the landscape uncertain. So I tucked the question away. For now.

“How come Drew couldn’t walk Dave the dog?” she asked, grabbing Dave’s stick again as he presented it to her, and giving it another hearty throw.