‘I found some recovery podcasts, like you recommended. There’s one run by two women. I wrote in to thank them, marvellous what they’re doing, and told them a bit of my story. They’ve invited me on as a guest – how it’s going, six months on.’

‘That could be interesting,’ Cindy noted.

‘Hm,’ Jules agreed. ‘Interesting and available for the whole world to download. I know it’s common knowledge in my old team, my immediate contemporaries, but no one knows the details and a lot still assume it was drinking rather than gambling.’ She grimaced. ‘I’m not sure I’m ready to tell the full story.’

‘When are we ready for anything?’ Cindy asked with a smile, her palms flat in the air.

*

After her session Jules walked home, rather than catching the bus, winding along the river, through Barnes, and along the river path, past empty gasworks and squat urban buildings and wider long-grassed sections that made you forget you were in a city. It was sunny despite the chill and small groups of people were sitting along the river, their legs kicking against the stone wall lining the Thames, cupping mugs of mulled wine from the riverside pub.

She went inside to the bar, ordered a single whisky, and found a bench outside close to a heater, her gold crystal-croissant bag on her lap. She tuned in to the hubbub of conversation around her, the reports of bad dates and husbands not pulling their weight and irritating colleagues. She missed her friends. It was a deep, whole-body ache. Like wanting a child, but worse. She had grown with these women; they had been a part of each other’s lives for so long. How could this have happened? She opened their WhatsApp group. Silent, still. What would happen if she sent a message? she wondered. Would anyone respond? But what could they possibly say, what could any of them say to explain their absence? How could Jules, without telling them all what she’d done? They’d abandoned each other, hadn’t they? Was it too painful for their friendship to have continued?

She wasn’t ashamed of being an addict, but she was ashamed of how she’d behaved. Did she owe them an explanation? She couldn’t decide.

She pulled up the list on her phone. When she had begun confronting her debts and paying them off, she’d made a list. It was long – longer than she’d realised or wanted to admit to. Most were on credit cards, which she’d swapped from zero interest to zero interest until she’d run out of options and the repayments had ballooned. With the consolidation loan she was paying them off slowly each month, but there were others that she was still working her way through.

She scanned down the list until she got to ‘Alice: £5,000.’ Then she pulled up Aki Mantel’s number. She closed her eyes and exhaled deeply. She knew what she had to do.

17

Nine Months After Paris

Alice was having the strangest day. Earlier, she’d received a deposit for £5,030 into her bank account, from an account she didn’t recognise. The reference was ‘Mantel Nursery’. Finally, almost a year since she’d completed the project, she’d been paid! It was the amount she was due, plus, she suspected, a little extra for interest.