Alice chuckled. ‘Maybe we should do it when we get to the apartment.’ She could so easily fall asleep too, if she just closed her eyes. She felt her face move into a smile at the thought of Nina’s apartment: the many times they’d got ready to go out, sequins and champagne littering the room, how they’d sat in Nina’s bed together eating ice cream and watching Sex and the City on her laptop as, outside, the streets of Paris busied around them. She knew it meant a lot to Nina too, having been her grandmother Sylvie’s. On their last few trips to Paris, Nina had seemed at home there, grounded in a way she hadn’t been when they were younger. Light streamed in through the train’s window, bathing them in a wash of gold, warming her skin.

‘Thanks so much for letting us all stay,’ she said.

Nina shifted in her seat, looking uncomfortable. She glanced at Jules, whose face had relaxed into sleep. Nina seemed to be weighing something up.

‘Paul booked it,’ she mouthed.

‘I know,’ Alice nodded. Paul had said he would pay for their travel and accommodation when he presented the weekend as a gift to Jules at her birthday dinner a few weeks ago. He’d had someone mock up a train ticket for her inside her birthday card: ‘A weekend in Paris with your girlfriends!’ it had said. ‘He’s smooth, isn’t he?’

Nina pulled a dubious face at that and then said in a low voice, ‘No, I mean he booked it without telling me. He got his secretary to do it, so her name showed up, and I accepted and he paid for it and then he messaged me to explain and check it was okay. Which was a bit, “after the event”, you know? Like, what if we were busy, or couldn’t make it or something?’

Alice paused, thoughtful. She’d assumed Paul and Nina had come up with the weekend away plan together, that Nina had volunteered the apartment.

‘Oh,’ she said. That was different. She’d never shared with Nina her concerns about Paul. She’d been dazzled by him when they first met, a tall, handsome, smooth-talking Bermudian. He was charismatic and charming, as well as thoughtful. But in the last few years he seemed to have grown aloof, sometimes not turning up for things at the last minute, Jules seeming distracted when asked where he was. She’d assumed it was just her who had noticed, but from the look on Nina’s face now, she wasn’t sold on Paul either.

‘It’s a bit weird, isn’t it?’ Nina said.

Alice nodded, checking again that Jules was asleep. Her mouth was parted slightly now and her breathing was deep and regular. She looked like she needed to sleep, as if she’d been up all night working, which she probably had. She would never say it to Jules but she secretly thought that her job, with its demanding hours and late nights, couldn’t help with her fertility quest.