She’d intended to spend the morning carefully packing away her grandmother’s things but had been surprised by how little she wanted to part with. Her grandmother’s aesthetic felt grown-up minimal and she liked the elegance of her surroundings, knowing that each piece of art would have been carefully chosen and curated by Sylvie. She’d expected the apartment to feel like a mausoleum, but instead it felt like an oasis of calm. When the buzzer rang mid-afternoon, she expected it was Susu, her grandmother’s upstairs neighbour who often forgot her front door key, so she buzzed her in unthinkingly and jumped when there was a knock at her door seconds later.

It was Teddy. Or Ted, rather – he’d decided to rebrand when he began working in the City. She hated how her heart still stuttered when she saw him; how her breath caught in her throat. He looked wedding-ready, his hair tidy and swept to one side, his skin clear and bright, suggesting he had stuck to the pre-wedding routine mapped out for him by Alice and Clemency (no late nights or booze, less caffeine, eight hours’ sleep). ‘Good practice for when we start trying straight after the wedding!’ Alice had said on her hen do, a spa weekend, and on this one ground Nina felt that history was working out as it should: both Alice and Ted were desperate for a family, while Nina found it hard enough to look after herself; she couldn’t imagine ever wanting to do the same for a child.

‘Walk with me?’ was all he said. It was a month or so since she’d last seen him, when they spent an evening drinking and compiling questions and answers for a Mr & Mrs game for Alice’s hen do.

Nina looked down at her clothes. She was wearing an oversized white shirt and skinny jeans, with a floral scarf fashioned into a headband and knotted at the top. ‘Sure,’ she said. Her head was pounding with a red-wine hangover and she thought some air might do her good. Somehow, once Ted and Alice were in a proper relationship, first moving in together then getting engaged, it made things easier between her and Ted: their friendship walked in the sunshine now, it wasn’t hidden away in emails and long correspondence, though they did still email, rambling missives about what they were watching at the moment or what music they were listening to. Ted had even joked about making her his best man, but Alice chidingly reminded him that she’d got there first.

‘So this is yours?’ Ted said, standing near the doorway as she skittered around looking for a cardigan and her keys. He wore his usual Ted uniform: a casual shirt and chinos with deck shoes. She noted the tone of approval in his voice and saw him again in her family’s little terraced house, so incongruous to the scene.

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Mad, isn’t it? I miss her,’ she added.

It was a sunny day, the air box-fresh, with white brushstrokes layering the sky. Nina already knew where they would go, but it didn’t matter really: it mattered only that they were together. She felt this sense, and she was sure Ted felt it too – they were on the edge of something, a precipice, between him being her friend and him being her best friend’s husband. However much Alice accepted their friendship now, things would be different when they were married, but neither of them knew in what way. What mattered was now.