‘I’d rather – I think it’s better if we don’t see each other right now, Alex,’ I whispered eventually, staring at a hole in his trainers. ‘I don’t want to know about your new girlfriends, really.’ I felt a great depression soaking me, a depression so greedy and black it engulfed me entirely. Nothing, it whispered, its tentacles crawling, there is nothing for you here. Nothing loomed in my future apart from loneliness and my best mate leaving the country and working for bloody Charlie against my better judgement. I was trapped. ‘Could you really not just have been on your own for a bit?’

‘You’re hardly the Virgin Mary yourself, now, are you, sweetheart?’ Alex snapped, pushing a hand through his hair.

I narrowed my eyes at him. ‘What the hell does that mean?’

‘Nothing.’ He turned away to pick up his keys. ‘Look, this is all bollocks. I only came to say let’s put the flat on the market.’

‘Oh, right.’ I stared at him. ‘Bloody great. So you want me homeless as well.’

‘We’re gonna have to do it sometime, so why not now?’

‘And that’s what you came all the way round here to say?’

‘Yep.’ Digby was worrying at the scarf that Alex had stuffed in his back pocket. ‘Leave it, Dig.’

‘Why didn’t you just phone?’

‘I did.’

‘Did you?’ I was sure he hadn’t. Had he?

‘I came –’ The dog still wouldn’t let go. ‘I came because’, Alex swiped at him half-heartedly, ‘I thought it was the decent thing to do.’

‘You never do the decent thing.’

‘I do.’ He looked like a belligerent teenager. ‘Sometimes.’

I looked back in disbelief, and felt the sudden urge to laugh. It was the moment the tension that twanged so tight between us could have been dispersed. He sensed it too, grinning sheepishly at me, and my heart did a tiny forward-roll.

But I didn’t laugh, because Digby finally freed the stripy scarf from his master’s holey jeans, trailing it victoriously round the kitchen in his mouth like a trophy. Something followed the scarf, tumbling out of Alex’s back pocket, floating to the ground between us. We both watched it as it hit the floor: a packet of gold and silver confetti stamped with the immortal words ‘Bel and Johnno Forever – You Betcha!’ Confetti they’d been giving away at their party the other night. I picked the tiny packet up and turned it over, frowning again.

‘Where did you get this?’

‘I don’t know,’ Alex shrugged, biting the skin round his thumb now. ‘It must be yours. Look, I’ve got to go.’

‘It’s not mine. You weren’t at Bel’s, were you?’

He kept on at that thumb.

‘Alex! Were you at the party?’