‘Kallie?’ Kate looked dismayed. ‘I barely met her. She’s, ah…Rachel, are you sure you want to do this? Okay. Well, she seems cool. It was so awkward when he left and she tried to joke about it. “So you meet a guy and he says he doesn’t do complicated.” They live in Denver. She’s…fortyish, I guess? But cool. Like you,’ she added brightly.

There was so much more I wanted to ask, but I said, ‘I’m fine, Kate, don’t worry. C’m’ere.’ I pulled her into a tight hug, then she went off about her business.

I rang Nola and brought her up to date. ‘There are too many feelings in me,’ I said. ‘Every one of them horrible.’

‘The only question is,’ she said. ‘Are you going to take something?’

‘I haven’t got anything to take! Sorry. No. Of course it’s a no.’

‘Then you’ll be fine. All part of the process, just some more emotional and spiritual growth for you!’

She made it sound like a good thing, like I’d won a small prize. ‘And when I’ve emerged from the growing I’ll be…what? Stronger? More resilient?’

‘Time will tell.’

‘But it hurts. Will the Luke stuff never not hurt?’

‘Shur, how would I know, girl? Golden Key it.’

Aargh! It’s what she always reverted to when we talked about Luke. I’d been Golden Keying him for years and the universe still hadn’t sorted it out.

‘Off to sleep with you now, pet. Ring me if you need me. Harry never minds.’

Again, I thought about ringing Quin, maybe going over to his and climbing under his duvet, where he’d hold me tight. But it would be a mistake to let him see the state of me. He’d be hurt. Mistrustful even. And that would linger long after my feelings about Luke had returned to normal.

More in hope than expectation I went to bed. Please make me sleep. But that wasn’t how my higher power rolled. There was no point ever in me asking for something specific—Chanel bags, global cooling, green traffic lights all the way home—the only thing I had consistently been given was an eventual acceptance of my situation, whatever that was.

Sure enough, an overload of adrenaline powered through me—I’d be awake all night at this rate. I had to get back out of bed and huff and puff my way through allegedly calming ‘breath-work’ for all the good it did.

As the clock ticked past 1 a.m., anger began to build. I’d always been a person of delayed reactions, absolutely useless at defending myself in the moment, instead having fabulously articulate middle-of-the-night back-and-forths in my own head, several hours or days or even weeks after the appropriate time.