Moss comes to the front of the shop unpicking the seams of a gold Yves St Laurent blouse and kisses Dinah. ‘My bride!’ Against his dark trousers, the blouse pools like molten gold and catches the sunlight.

She fusses over him, picking a strand of gold thread off his sleeve and blowing the cut gold threads away into the breeze.

‘David!’ The squeak of trainers on cobbles makes me look up. It’s Alexa.

Moss touches his trilby.

‘David,’ she says, bursting into tears.

‘Alexa,’ he says.

Moss bundles the gold blouse under his arm. ‘Sit,’ he says to Alexa, pulling his chair towards her. ‘Sit before you fall.’

‘I don’t want to sit,’ she replies fiercely. ‘Have you seen Gigi?’ she asks David between sobs.

Other people’s emotions scare the life out of me even more than my own and I glance at David, who’s holding his light box and looking at her with a thousand-yard stare.

I don’t really know how long a person can cry for. It’s years since I’ve really cried. Even with Mick, I held it in. My head’s full of no-go areas, places I steer clear of.

Dinah makes two cups of tea and gives one to David. ‘Don’t upset yourself,’ she says to Alexa. ‘Take this.’

This time, she does sit down. She’s shaking as she takes the cup and she sips it, closing her eyes in the steam.

Alexa turns to David. ‘What am I going to do?’

‘I don’t know,’ he says, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment and pinching the bridge of his nose.

I have a sudden flash of inspiration. ‘I’ve got some really gorgeous dresses in your size, if you want to take a look.’

I realise immediately that it’s the wrong thing to say by the fact that she stops crying and looks at me open-mouthed.

‘I can’t believe you, Fern. You’re seeing my heartbreak as a sales opportunity?’

‘Sorry.’ It sounds really cringy, the way she says it. ‘I just thought it might make you feel better. It’ll protect you, like wearing a hazmat suit. Reinvent yourself!’

She blows her nose irritably. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Reinvent yourself as someone unobtainable and strong; someone Max can’t have.’ Suddenly, I’m sounding like an expert on a subject I don’t really know much about. Don’t ask me where all this insight is suddenly coming from, but one thing I’ve learnt about life is you’ve got to have some armour in place against slings and arrows, otherwise it’s easier just to lie down and give up.

Alexa has replaced her grief with a different emotion entirely: indignation. ‘And that’s it? That’s your cure for the fact he’s smashed my life to bits? I should buy myself something new?’

‘That’s not exactly what I was—’