Resolving to enjoy the last few hours of peace alone, she turned her phone off to conserve her ailing battery, closed her eyes, and spent the rest of the journey wrapped up in a series of delicious daydreams concerning a half-naked Mr Hough. She luxuriated in it, sunlight warming her face through the window, promising herself this was the last time she would submit to this particular fantasy. As soon as she was home, she’d speak to Ted about home-schooling Charlotte, however radical it seemed. She thought back to the night they slipped away from le Bal, casting aside tradition and incurring the wrath of her mother, who had only truly forgiven her when they announced their engagement. ‘So you did find a husband at le Bal?’ she’d smirked. Alice and Ted could do radical, they’d done it once before.

*

15.30 Eurostar Departure, Paris to London

You have a chance to start again, Jules reminded herself, squirming in her seat, as her train departed. Fearing she might bump into Nina or Alice she had walked all the way to Père Lachaise Cemetery, stopping only for a ham and cheese baguette and a deliciously cold can of Coke from a small épicerie to appease her hangover. She traversed the cobbled, tree-lined alleys of the cemetery, barely seeing the grand mausoleums sculpted from marble and stone, her suitcase bumping along behind her, until she knew the 14.00 Eurostar she, and the girls, had been booked on had left. What was she going to do?

All is not lost, she reminded herself. You won back the money. But she was struggling to hold on to that thought. It was being drowned out by the waves of fear washing over her, the almighty claps of spray and thunder that were jumbling in her ears and which, when they retreated, rhythmically, every minute or so, left behind the same words on the blank sand of her mind: put it all on red.

It was a cymbal in an orchestrated piece, an exclamation mark in a chorus, a green light in gridlocked traffic. It was a ‘stop’ and a ‘go this way’ all at once. It made no sense and it made everything clear at the same time. It was comfort, before it was pain. It was burying herself in the familiar, in the scent of her father’s coat or his soft green scarf, rather than starting again, alone. How could she ever do that? How could she ever start again, alone? Without Paul, without her friends, without any hope or prospect of a baby? What would that life look like? She could think of nothing more frightening. Putting it all on red was an innately more comforting option; it was tangible, it was real, it made sense to Jules in a world that had, for her, long ago lost its sheen.

No, she told herself. No. Think of the stress you put yourself under this weekend. You can’t live that way any more. This is a clean slate. A chance to start again. Alone. The thought was too fleeting for her to process, the tingling in her limbs too distracting. The cymbals started up again. The dizzying spray, the building chorus, the urge to scream into the void. Alone, alone, alone. Who would save her now? Who would want to? Would Alice ever forgive her? Would Nina, when she knew the extent of her problems?