She was standing in the long white hallway, in a T-shirt and knickers, when she saw them together on the sofa bed in the living area, sleeping bodies entwined, sheets twisted and turned over in their slumber. Alice looked thinner, Nina noticed for the first time. Alice. Alice and Teddy.

She pulled on baggy jeans and some clompy platform espadrilles of Alice’s – the first things she could find – and stumbled out of the flat and along the road, her hangover crashing and banging around in her skull, rooting in her bag for a cigarette as loose change, a ticket from last night and a piece of paper with a phone number on it all fell from her bag. She sighed and stopped to scoop it all up, and she was still crunched over on the floor when she looked up and saw the newspaper headline, pinned to a display stand, stacks of the same edition below: LAURENT DOMMAGE. There was a photo of her father looking particularly shady, staring malevolently at the pert derrière of a co-star on the red carpet. She stayed crouched on the floor, sweating, her eyes closed. No wonder she picked the wrong men, she thought.

*

It was cold as the three of them sat in enormous sunglasses at a rickety table in Le Marais. Her feet, still in espadrilles, were freezing. Nina’s eyes swam at the variations of oeufs available; she pushed the menu away. It was lucky nothing appealed; she could barely afford this trip. She shouldn’t have come.

‘Good night then?’ Jules said to Alice, grinning.

‘Oh my goodness!’ Alice squealed, concealing her face with her hands while Jules grinned at Nina and she tried to return it. ‘Is it bad that I’m shagging Teddy? It’s bad, isn’t it?’ She prised her fingers apart. ‘But…’ – she bit her lip and widened her eyes cheekily, almost in danger of winking like a pervert, observed Nina – ‘it’s so… surprisingly… good!’

‘Oh my God!’ breathed Jules, quickly asking for details while also exchanging that she too had recently experienced surprising – but ultimately brilliant – sex with an old course mate, Lev, who was working at a neighbouring bank.

‘Sorry, Neen, I should’ve mentioned it yesterday, but I was embarrassed and Teddy and I hadn’t discussed “going public” yet, but I suppose it’s too late now!’ Alice made a squealing ‘eek’ sound, clapping her hands on her cheeks. It felt so good to finally share what had been going on with her friends. She hadn’t been sure what it meant, if it meant anything at all, the first time she and Teddy slept together. They were drunk. If you’d suggested she might fancy Teddy, she’d have laughed. Said she knew him too well to find him attractive. Now she wondered whether that was a story she’d told herself because she’d thought then that someone like Teddy Astor, someone who other women clocked and surveyed appreciatively with alarming frequency, would never fancy someone like her. Someone ordinary. Someone chunky. Before Australia, she couldn’t imagine seeing anything redeeming in him at all. But travelling with Lulu was less fun than she’d expected, and it had been a relief to cross paths with Teddy and his friend Dickie at the hostel in Sydney. The four of them had travelled for a few weeks together, and she and Teddy had bonded over the lack of home comforts, sleeping in bunk beds and listening to Dickie’s terrible guitar-playing. Then they were thrown together again with Erasmus, each seeming to the other a more pleasant prospect than the other students they didn’t know as well. They were homesick at first and felt connected. Then there was the night he slipped an arm around her and she immediately backed off, reminded him of the unkind things he used to say about her, and that’s when he began to open up.