Damn it, now she had to go and be nice, on top of everything else. Nice and not up-herself. Why couldn’t she be an unpleasant airhead like Michelle? That made life a lot easier, in Em’s experience. ‘Conferences can be like another planet sometimes,’ she said, hoping she sounded sage and savvy, a woman of the world herself. In truth she’d only ever been to one conference and it had been in a budget hotel just outside Swindon, and Em had got so pissed with the other delegates that she’d fallen over on the dance floor. Charlotte didn’t need to know that, though. ‘Anyway,’ she said weakly, ‘nice to meet you.’

George was in the kitchen, bagging up his hiking boots with a nearly-dry towel draped over one shoulder. ‘Listen, I’m sorry about this,’ he said as she came in. It didn’t seem possible for a conversation to take place without someone apologizing, all of a sudden.

‘No, I’m sorry,’ she replied. Make that two people apologizing. They were all just utterly sorry. She hesitated, feeling wretched, not wanting the connection between them to be severed quite so suddenly. Until this holiday, they’d been getting on so well! Was there no chance they could return to that place? She hadn’t even really been able to explain what had happened with Izzie. ‘Um . . .’ she began tentatively, but her confidence deserted her. She was too scared that George might be more brutal about the split if she pushed things.

He didn’t seem to notice her hesitation. In fact he was already striding past her. ‘I’ll just get my stuff from the bedroom,’ he said over his shoulder.

In a matter of minutes it had become ‘the bedroom’, rather than ‘our bedroom’, she realized glumly. Shortly to be ‘your bedroom’. ‘Mum’s bedroom’. And thus the dream was over, as was her chance to have a last private moment with him. With a bustle of packing and checking, the three of them were out of the house and driving away before she could muster the courage to try again.

An hour or so later, Em sank into one of the pool loungers with a very large and very cold glass of white wine. It was a beautiful tranquil evening, the sun casting streaks of bronze and pink across the sky and backlighting a cluster of small puffy clouds; she could hear the raspy clicking of crickets somewhere behind her, while a late-working bee nudged against the smudgy purple lavender heads. A gorgeous scene, in other words. Idyllic. The sort of moment that an artistic type might photograph and put on their social media (no filters!). Shame she felt like screaming her head off instead, frankly.