‘Prosecco?’ said the stewardess, proffering her tray with a playful wink.

‘Cheers,’ Jemima said as she took a glass.

However, staring at Miles’s text, she could have done with the whole bottle. Jemima necked her drink in one. Its cheap plonk bubbles immediately effervesced in her throat, threatening to shoot out of a nostril. She spluttered, glancing around the half-full airplane cabin as she tried to choke to death discreetly. Though her dad was American, she was as British as binge drinking and sarcasm so drawing attention to herself, even when dying, felt inappropriate. Finally, satisfied she’d been largely ignored by the boarding passengers, she slumped back in her premium economy seat, fingers tight around her phone. Why did Miles always do this? They’d broken up two years ago! She’d bought a new boiler, started dyeing her hair Deep Mahogany to hide her roots and had had twenty-six periods since then. Yet every time it felt like she was getting her life back on track, up he’d pop like a bad game of Ex-boyfriend Whack-a-Mole. She deleted the text. Whack.

Things were good, Jemima reassured herself, despite this pebble in her shoe. Finally, at the age of 42, life felt like it had some order again. Work was on track – sort of. She was doing okay financially… well, kind of. For a clean sweep, all she had to do was muster the courage to bat her niggly ex away once and for all and she’d be good. As she thought, half-heartedly, about how she might do that, another message from Miles whooshed into her inbox, this time with an accompanying photo. ‘Great. Now with added attachments,’ she groaned.

Number 62 is finally off the market!

Jemima bristled as she peered at the picture of the ‘fixer-upper’ property at the end of her street. With its overgrown front garden, faded green door and grubby windows it looked more like a crime scene than a potential investment. But what really bothered Jemima about this photo was, it was another reminder how close Miles still lived to her. When they’d been together, living on adjacent streets had been cute. Friends were always telling her how they had ‘the best of both worlds’. But when their relationship had imploded, ‘the best of both worlds’ became hell on earth. A wave of anger rippled through her. She’d really loved him. More than anything she was angry at herself for letting him in, for forgiving the missed birthdays, broken promises and tired old let-downs. She’d excused his self-centeredness as ambition and his narcissism as self-care throughout their three-and-a-half-year relationship. His weekly threading appointment alone should have rung alarm bells. The day after, his eyebrows were so impeccable, he looked like a cruise ship magician. Jemima wished she’d listened to her girlfriends, Simi and Meagan, but she’d been in love. She couldn’t hear them, that is until who Miles was became a noise she could no longer ignore. And so they’d broken up, a street apart. At the time, Jemima had desperately wanted to move apartments but just couldn’t afford to, so instead had concocted strategies to avoid bumping into him – including an extra half-mile walk to a different tube station. Jemima shuddered at the chronically recent memory of diving into Number 62’s overgrown shrubbery when she’d seen Miles approaching from the other end of the street. She was pulling privet twigs from her hair all the way to the tube and even now, wasn’t entirely sure it was Miles. That was nearly seven weeks ago and was, for Jemima, the last straw… well, twig. She needed to get away. For years, Rebecca, an old work colleague, had been inviting Jemima to visit her in Los Angeles. That afternoon, privet leaves still entangled in her neat bob, Jemima had finally accepted the invitation. Within a week, she had booked her flight, packed a bag and was gone – one of the few benefits of being a self-employed writer. If she needed to, she could escape at a moment’s notice.