The last shift was a Friday.

She knew this. She had known it for two weeks. She had circled it in her head the way you circled things you were not sure whether you were dreading or looking forward to and had arrived at the answer that it was both and that both was fine.

She clocked in at eleven fifty five.

He was already at the station.

She had expected this and still felt it when she came through the door — the specific awareness of him that had been her constant for six months, recalibrated now, sharper in the specific way of things you had finally admitted to...