She tried not to think of her friends. Tried not to let her sorrow burrow into her heart because it was so hard to shift. Alice and Nina. Her two best friends. Where were they now? What were they up to this Friday night? She thought of noodles washed down with Asahi beers in Chinatown, nights on squishy Moroccan sofas eating tagines in Paris. She felt the familiar knot of betrayal. Why had neither of them got in touch? She could be pregnant now, for all they knew. Was her behaviour in Paris that weekend so bad she deserved to be excommunicated? It was a blessing and a curse all at once. Their absence meant she didn’t have to tell them what she’d done, but it also made her feel impossibly empty. As though she could never be whole again. They were the only friends who truly got her. Her only friends she could be herself around. Jennifer had dropped out of contact long ago when she was on to her third child and living out her free-range chicken fantasies in the suburbs, but Jules had grown tired of their friendship long before that. She hated the competitive side of her that emerged when they were together.

She stared at the pound. Eventually, at 21.55, just before it was due to close, she walked to the newsagents and bought a scratch card. The tingling through her forehead as she slowly peeled off the layer of silver, the glimpse below of fragmented numbers and cash signs. It rippled through her, waves of excitement. It was just like the first time. She felt giddy. She’d missed this feeling. Missed this rush.

An hour later and she could no longer think straight. Since the scratch card, she’d already gambled the remaining money in her personal account, maxed out her overdraft and reactivated the accounts that had been flirting with her ever since Paris, offering her free stakes if she returned, all of which she’d used and lost. She stared at the numbers for a long time: £10,300. The money she’d raised for the ASD charity. It had already been match-funded by the bank and the charity had emailed her politely a number of times asking where her portion was: Could she have transferred it under a different name? Did she have the correct account details for them? She’d held on to the money like a crutch. It was proof she was a good person. It was proof she didn’t have a problem. And it was a final, last-resort cushion in case she urgently needed some cash.

Thoughts swirled around her head. She could double the money for the charity, couldn’t she? Triple it, maybe? She wasn’t sure she even believed that herself any more. Had she ever believed it? But look what happened in Paris. Look how much you made there…

She closed her eyes and took a deep, steadying breath. Then she put it all on red.