Then one fateful day her whole world had fallen apart. It had started with Maddie’s boss, Toby, calling her into his office to explain that the company was downsizing, and it wasn’t anything personal, and if he could keep her on then he would in a heartbeat, but to cut a very long story short it was last in, first to go, which meant there was no big lump sum pay-off coming to her. Inside she had been panicking, swimmy with nausea as she wondered how she was going to manage to pay her half of the bills.

As fate would have it, she found out the next morning that she had won a photography competition with a thousand-pound cash prize plus all the equipment necessary to set her up as a professional photographer. It was a dream come true for Maddie. She was a big believer in things happening for a reason, and so figured the redundancy was a sign, a kick-start to make her go for it and create the career change that she had hankered after for so long.

Her euphoria at having ‘lost a penny and found a pound’, as Sofia put it when Maddie FaceTimed her to share the news, was extremely short-lived. That very same evening, in fact mere moments after she had ended the call with Sofia, Brad had arrived home and, cutting her off as she was about to tell him about her win, announced that he had been offered, and had accepted, a promotion. A big step up with a significant salary increase. In New York.

As Maddie had dashed forward to congratulate him with a hug and a kiss, ecstatic for him and at the prospect of them moving to New York together, Brad had taken two steps backwards and, without meeting her eye, informed her that he was, ‘just not feeling the wedding vibe any more’. Maddie’s world had stopped spinning, suspended in space as if time had stood still, as he carried on talking, telling her that while he didn’t want to hurt her, this was something he just had to do alone: ‘It’s a fresh start for me, Mads!’