‘I’m feeling a lot better,’ she told Cindy. And it was true. After Paris she had spent a fortnight, for the first time in her life, without any money. Without access to food or the freedom to do as she pleased. She took long walks along the Thames Path, practised yoga via YouTube videos, cobbled together food with the random things in the cupboard and freezer. She didn’t even mind; her overriding feeling as she glanced around her immaculate home was how lucky she was to have the four walls that surrounded her. It had been an invaluable lesson. She would never put herself in a vulnerable position like that again. She would never gamble again.

After the fortnight she’d been paid, thankfully. She transferred her share of the mortgage and bills into the joint account as usual and walked to her local supermarket, filling her trolley with comfort food; things not permitted under her fertility doula, Flora’s, regime: rice pudding, fish fingers and thick crusty bread.

Cindy tipped her head, assessing her. ‘How so?’ she asked.

‘Well, I’ve been paid.’ She smiled. ‘I’m looking after myself. I’m cooking and cleaning and doing all the things Paul used to do.’ Now she was getting the hang of looking after herself, she recognised with some embarrassment the extent to which Paul had been molly-coddling her. No wonder he didn’t want to have a baby with her.

‘How are you feeling about therapy now?’ Cindy asked, recalling Jules’s fury at their first meeting that she had effectively been forced to come.

Jules smiled gingerly. ‘I… Of course they were right to send me. Of course I needed to come. I’m so grateful for it now. I’ve started to see what happened as an opportunity, you know? It’s been good for me. To stand on my own two feet again. I lost my grip on things for a while there but I’ve had this chance to reset and yes. I feel good.’

Cindy looked at her impassively, a tiny frown belying the Are we really going to do this?

‘It’s funny,’ she said. ‘I’ve met a lot of women in this room. Women who never want to show any weaknesses, women who will tell me exactly what they think I want to hear so I’ll discharge them and they can get back to work. Put all the messy business behind them and get back to normal.’ She wiped her hands over each other and flung them apart, like throwing away rubbish.

‘That must be frustrating,’ Jules responded evenly, but her interest was piqued. ‘You’ve met a lot of women like me?’ she asked curiously. There were so few women doing what she did in the City, she couldn’t imagine anyone else having messed up so badly.

Cindy nodded. ‘It’s alcohol usually. Sometimes drugs. Porn. Sex. Love. Shopping. Painkillers.’ She looked out of the window, which framed gleaming towers of glass and steel. ‘There’s a lot of addicts in the City. There’s a lot of addicts everywhere.’ She glanced up at the clock. ‘I’m going to recommend you start going to meetings.’