‘Presumably because I’ve not got a famous boyfriend any more.’

‘I think that’s being slightly paranoid. Are you sure you’re not just—’

‘Mia’s always had the cultural hots for Art. And now my stock’s gone down. I can feel it.’

Kelly swigs her beer. ‘Fucking Foof Towers. Fuck. Off. S’all bullshit anyway.’

‘Shh,’ I say.

‘What?’

‘You’re being quite loud.’

‘I’m just sticking up for you.’

‘But still, you never know who’s listening.’

She looks at me the way she’s been looking at me since I walked in – like she’s trying to see where my face is attached to my head or my hair is attached to my head, or something.

‘Yes!’ I say loudly, as though I am replying to something else she has said – something else that is a fun brand of conversation, for anyone who might be able to hear or see us.

Kelly shakes her head and takes another swig of beer. ‘So you left a fourteen-year-old in the street at night.’

‘He’s a big boy!’

‘He’s fourteen.’

‘He can take care of himself!’

‘But I asked you to take care of him. And you left him. Because your ex is seeing someone new. That’s your priority.’

There is a waiter beside us. ‘Are you ready to order?’ he says.

I shake my head. ‘The Art thing is not even the worst thing I’m contending with,’ I say.

‘Actually,’ says Kelly, ‘I only have forty-five minutes, so can we order soon?’

‘Please could you give us just a few minutes?’ I say to the waiter. He nods and walks away.

‘I can’t think about food while I’m telling you about this. I’m not even hungry.’

‘Okay,’ Kelly says.

‘He’s seeing Suzy Brambles,’ I say, giving this sentence the delivery it deserves.

‘Suzy … Brambles?’

‘Don’t say her n-name.’

‘Is that a real person?’

‘As real as the real on my face.’

‘Well, it’s never nice to find out about these things,’ says Kelly, and now she does talk quietly. I am relieved but also slightly unsettled by the sound of her voice. Still, she doesn’t know the whole story, so I fill her in. I tell her about the arm picture, the comment, the likes, the messages, the fact Suzy unfollowed me after clearly using me to find Art. We have to tell the waiter to go away again twice.

Kelly looks at her watch and smiles at me in a way she’s never smiled at me before, like someone who’s about to tell me I haven’t got the job might smile at me, a nice person with bad news. It isn’t the way you expect a friend to react to this crushing tale of woe.

‘What do you think I should do?’ I say.

‘Do?’