‘A meeting?’ Jules snapped.

‘It would help you to connect with other gamblers. To feel less isolated.’

‘I don’t feel—’ she started, but she stopped. She absolutely did feel isolated but that’s why she was doing all this. To get Paul back. That was why she was doing everything. ‘Do I look like an addict to you?’ she said, alarmed. ‘Really? Is this how a gambling addict behaves? Getting their life back on track? I’ve not gambled in a month! Not since Paris. I told you, it was a blip and I’m feeling much better.’ Her voice rose in alarm. She couldn’t go to a meeting. Meetings weren’t for people like her. Meetings were for people with real problems, people with nowhere to live, no one to help them. People who had lost everything. She was wearing a Chanel suit and was perched on a private psychiatrist’s velvet chaise longue in the City. She was hardly in the gutter.

‘I want you to go to one before our next session,’ Cindy said firmly.

‘But I’m very busy now I’m back at work. I’ve had to make up for my time off.’ Which was true. Jules knew her fall from grace was a poorly kept secret. The rumour was she was an alcoholic, but she preferred that; somehow it felt less shameful than a banker who couldn’t look after their own money.

‘They run early morning, at lunchtimes, after work. You will definitely find time between now and next week.’

*

A few days later, on Friday night, Jules found herself entering a small loft room in Hampstead (she’d wanted to be far away from the City and Chiswick so there was no risk of bumping into anyone). This wasn’t how meetings were meant to look. They were meant to be in vast church halls with chairs in a circle and tepid coffee and biscuits on a rectangular trestle table. This was an airless room above a coffee shop, with an assortment of chairs and sofas, all set at different heights, and a humid, tropical climate. There wasn’t even a broad mix of people: they were all men, scruffy ones at that, men who looked like they’d had a hard life and not eaten many vegetables. This wasn’t where Jules belonged, in her cigarette pants and silk vest top.

Her entrance caught the attention of the room, the murmured conversations drawing to a hush as she sat down. ‘This is GA, isn’t it?’ she asked, self-conscious, as a pale man with a neat shock of red hair and an armful of tattoos nodded. She couldn’t recall a time she had ever felt so out of place.

‘Too much bingo was it, love?’ a short, round man with grey hair and big bushy eyebrows asked her kindly and the others gently remonstrated with him.

‘Don’t mind him, he’s new,’ one said. ‘Like you.’

‘Right,’ she said stiffly. She turned to the man. ‘Poker, mainly,’ she said. ‘Hold ’Em; no limit and big tournaments, Omaha, Stud…’