‘You want fat dogs?’ Meagan asked looking down at her.

‘My tarot lady was riiiiiight. Oscar never wanted children. She saw it all,’ sobbed Simi.

‘You can’t let some Sideshow Sally tell you what’s what in your life,’ said Meagan.

‘But she was right! She’s always right,’ said Simi before slumping back into Meagan’s lap.

This was pointless. Her need for spiritual guidance was one thing neither Meagan nor Jemima understood. They’d stopped coming to Simi’s tarot nights years ago probably because they already had everything figured out. Jemima was a successful author and Meagan had her ten thousand phase plan but Simi still felt lost. Her acting career was so tenuous it required inverted commas and though she had adored Oscar, something had been off. Even she couldn’t ignore the way he stalled or changed the subject whenever their future came up in conversation. So she’d decided to get answers from the only thing she trusted, a spread of randomly selected occult cards. When would they marry and how many children would they have? She hoped for three but would settle for twins and those chocolate Labs. The only thing Simi wanted as much was a BAFTA… and to be met at the airport by a driver with a nameboard.

The night of the reading Oscar had politely made his excuses, leaving Simi and her actor chums to eat a little, drink some more and have their fortunes read by Rosalie. But when Rosalie had laid out Simi’s cards, there’d been no sign of children with Oscar – at all. Simi had laughed, mainly out of shock. Next door, she could hear the others giggling and chatting whilst, here in the back bedroom, her life was imploding.

‘So he only wants one child?’ Simi had asked as she stared at a card showing a crumbling tower.

Rosalie had smiled sadly. ‘Let’s see what the next card says.’

She turned it over revealing a skeleton on a black horse… holding a scythe.

‘Oh,’ she’d said.

Afterwards, numb from the reading, Simi had returned to the living room and chatted with her friends as though none of this had happened. She oohed and aahed as one shared Rosalie’s prediction of a forthcoming work opportunity involving buffalo. She clapped excitedly for her acting chum Alice who had received a message from the other side saying not to worry about her teeth. Who knew the spirit realm could be so specific? And when they’d all asked about her reading, Simi had slapped on a grin, said it was all about change then changed the subject.

The following morning in bed Simi had turned to Oscar. She’d mustered all the courage she could to ask the one person who actually had the answers she sought.

‘Do you want children… with me?’

The plainness of his ‘no’ had shocked her.

And so there and then, in bed, just that morning, wearing Dr Seuss jammies, Simi and Oscar had broken up. Oscar had gone to his friend’s place to give Simi room to pack and Simi had wallowed in misery until Meagan had run to her rescue as she always did. Simi stared at the pile of collapsed cardboard boxes propped up against the living-room door that Meagan had arrived with. That’s how together she was. She had turned up with boxes. Even Amazon couldn’t have got them to her quicker. But how was Simi supposed to pack when her entire world had fallen apart? How could she start folding T-shirts when her life was in tatters? She closed her eyes and clung even tighter to Meagan who’d been stroking her hair while checking emails on her phone. Simi took a breath and launched into the middle eight of ‘My Heart Will Go On’. It was time.