He tipped his head in approval, weighing her up, and nodded.

Jules felt her heart pounding as the meeting opened. It was being led by Lane, a young man who didn’t look old enough to have had a debilitating addiction and recovered from it. He wore a white shirt with his sleeves rolled up and a neat thin navy tie. Jules wondered where he worked. He looked like a good fit for the IT department at a bank.

An agitated-looking man spoke first, his knee trembling the whole time, his right hand clamped on it as if trying to stop the shaking. That was a person in the grip of an addiction, she thought. He hadn’t gambled for two years but had come undone at his daughter’s school fete, abandoning – and losing – his toddler son when he ran to collect his raffle prize. Good grief, she thought, her eyes widening, these were not her people. At that moment he turned and caught her eye. He addressed Lane, gesturing at Jules with his elbow.

‘I don’t feel like I can speak freely while she’s here,’ he said. Some of the group frowned at him and muttered words of disquiet, but Jules noticed others who were also starting to turn, restless, discomforted by this incongruous woman in this group of men.

‘A bit like having the wife here, eh?’ added another, pulling his bottom lip between his thumb and index finger.

Jules’s face turned scarlet as Lane reminded the group of the guiding principles of GA; ‘It’s a fellowship,’ he was saying, ‘everyone is welcome’, a note of exasperation in his voice.

‘Aren’t there women’s groups?’ one asked.

‘No, actually, there aren’t,’ Jules said, frustrated. ‘There’s two. One in London at 5 p.m. on a Tuesday, which I can never make because we have a weekly team meeting then, and one in Manchester!’

‘I’m really sorry,’ Lane said, turning to Jules. ‘The truth is I’ve been running this group for three years and you’re the first woman we’ve had.’

How can that be true? Jules thought. Shame stung her cheeks. She reached down, one hand on her bag, preparing to bolt, but she froze and without intending to, she began to speak.

‘I’m a hedge-funder,’ she said. Maybe she shouldn’t be here, but that was her business, not theirs. Jules had spent her university and working life surrounded by men, carving out her own space, and she wasn’t going to be railroaded out of her first GA meeting by this group of no-hopers. ‘I’ve made £250,000 a year, and about the same in bonuses, for the last fifteen years, and it’s all gone.’

There was a stunned silence. Lane nodded at her to go on.

‘Last month, my husband found out. He knew the first time I got in trouble, and he bailed me out, but I did it again… I got a bonus, another seventy grand, and blew the lot. I was already in £80,000 debt by then…’ The numbers floated above her head, dissociated with her in this room. What did they mean, anyway? ‘So I spent a weekend winning it all back. I was in Paris with my oldest girlfriends, staying up all night online when I should have been enjoying myself with them. I even roped them into coming to a casino with me. In Paris! And I did it, too.’ The pride she’d felt in the toilets of the casino had long since deserted her. Now it seemed unreal, something that she knew happened but couldn’t properly remember. ‘I won it all back. And more. But it was too late. My husband left me. He refused to go through with the IVF we had planned. So I did it again. And I lost the lot. My friends haven’t contacted me since. My work found out. I’m just about clinging on to my job.’ A terrible realisation came to her now and she felt the horror of it as she verbalised it: ‘And the worst bit is, I know I’d do it all again…’