It doesn’t feel like one, though. I’m instantly transported back to Marek’s wedding: the two of us huddled together drunkenly at the dinner table. I know it’s pathetic, but it was so exciting to feel … wanted. To feel like someone fancied me. I haven’t felt that from Daphne in such a long time.

Alice’s phone starts buzzing and she pulls a face as she looks at the screen. ‘Sorry, I’ll just be one sec.’ She puts the phone to her ear and wanders away.

I’m left watching the Dodo Manège and realising that this – everything we’ve just been talking about – is entirely new territory. We never spoke about any of it originally, I’m sure of it. And it makes me wonder: will it affect what happens later? After all these fresh conversational twists and turns, will everything still pan out the way it did first time round?

The thought of how this night ended originally makes my stomach churn. I want to do the right thing – I really do – but I have no idea what that is. Because, as shameful as it is to admit, I have thought about this night a lot over the past six years. Half the time it comes back to gnaw guiltily at me as I lie beside Daphne in bed. But the rest of the time, it makes me wonder what might have been. How my life could have turned out if I’d stayed here.

My head is throbbing suddenly. I close my eyes and press my hand against them, enjoying the coolness of my palm. When I open them again, my gaze falls on the little wooden hut next to the crêpe stand. It’s a cutesy Christmas stall, decorated haphazardly with tinsel and fairy lights, selling all sorts of cheap, touristy festive gifts. And then I spot something I recognise.

The snow globe.

I walk over to the stall and pick it up. I bought this thing for Daphne first time around. It must have been at this exact moment, when Alice was on the phone. I thought it would make a funny, cheesy Christmas present – a nice thing to send back in reply to her card. I had no idea that I’d be posting it three days later feeling sick with guilt about what had happened tonight.

I give it a gentle shake, and hundreds of tiny snowflakes begin swirling gently around the miniature Dodo Manège. It’s a tacky little thing, really. I wonder where it is now. I wonder if Daphne kept it.

‘C’est combien?’ I ask, without looking up.

A gravelly voice replies, ‘Oh, you can have that one on the house!’

I glance up, and almost inevitably, there are two bright blue eyes twinkling back at me.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

‘Bloody hell …’