Even after six years, I can’t help fighting the urge to say ‘I’m sorry’ in response to a comment like this. The first thing we were taught in training was not to express any opinion or judgement whatsoever when a caller says something along these lines. It makes sense, I guess: somebody calls up and tells you their mum has just died, you say, ‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,’ and then they tell you that their mum abused them or neglected them or abandoned them. By expressing sadness or regret, you’re making the caller feel worse about the fact that they may have mixed emotions about their mother’s death.

Basically, we’re supposed to stay neutral until we have all the information. Which, in practice, is much harder than it sounds. Still, I manage to wrestle down my natural human instinct to offer condolence and instead say, ‘And how did that make you feel?’

I hear her take a breath as she considers this. ‘I felt awful because I’d hurt him, and he didn’t deserve to be hurt. And I felt bad because my mum and my sister and all my friends thought I was insane to break off an engagement aged thirty-three. But despite all that, I felt glad that I didn’t have to marry him.’

I nod. ‘It sounds like the right decision, then?’

‘Maybe. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like the right decision.’

‘How did you meet?’

Not sure where that came from. I feel a giddy – and slightly pathetic – thrill at having asked a direct question, which strictly speaking we’re not supposed to do on this line. We’re meant to stick to ‘open-ended’ questions – ‘How did that make you feel?’, ‘Can you tell me more about that?’ – rather than digging into specific facts or details. I suddenly hope Carole, Green Shoots’ director, doesn’t monitor these calls, or I’m sure to be in for a strongly worded email.

Either way, Pia doesn’t seem to mind.

‘We met on Tinder’, she says, inflating the last word with about six heavily-sighed Ns. ‘I know, right – how original. But I liked him straight away. And we were good together, I think. He made me laugh and he was kind, and – honestly – when my dad died last year, he was the one who kept me from falling apart completely.’

I swallow another ‘I’m sorry’.