‘I think he’s really brave,’ Charlie said. Every time she spoke to or about me, she touched me, stroking my back, squeezing my elbow. She looked at me lovingly. ‘It can’t simply be kissed better, though I’ve tried.’

Inside her head, I knew Sasha would be making vomiting noises.

‘Hey,’ Sasha said. ‘Remember that time at uni when we went on that country ramble with the bloody fell-walking club – you thought it would be fun to join but they were such a bunch of humourless wankers – and you didn’t have any proper walking boots so wore your trainers and you spent the next week moaning about your blister?’

‘Did I?’ I had a vague memory of this.

‘Yeah, you were a nightmare. Then there was that time we took E and the next day you were convinced you were going to die? You drank pints and pints of water because you’d seen something on the news about a girl who died of dehydration and you were sure you were having some sort of delayed reaction.’

‘You make me sound like a right hypochondriac.’

‘Then there was that time we—’

‘Excuse me, but I need to sort out dinner,’ Charlie said, knocking back her wine. Sasha had finished hers too and I refilled both their glasses. I was so woozy from the codeine that I was taking it easy, had had only a couple of sips of mine.

While Charlie prepared dinner – something she had insisted she wanted to do – I sat and chatted to Sasha.

‘How’s everything going?’

‘Hmm?’ Sasha had her eyes on Charlie, whose back was to us. I wanted to tell Sasha to stop being so hostile. What was it about Charlie that she didn’t like? So far, Charlie had been polite and completely inoffensive, even if she’d been a bit OTT with the touching and comments about kissing it better. Sasha was being unreasonable. She had decided she wasn’t going to like my girlfriend before she’d even met her. She had to accept this was the woman I loved.

But I couldn’t say all this – any of it – with Charlie in the room.

‘Any news about Lance or Mae?’ I asked.

Sasha tore her eyes away from Charlie’s back. ‘Oh God, yes. I had an encounter with him at work.’ She shivered. ‘I was in the stationery cupboard, getting a new notebook, and he came in.’

‘What happened?’

She took a deep breath. There was a lull in the music and Sasha lowered her voice, talking almost in a whisper. ‘He looked horrified to see me, tried to completely frigging ignore me. But I wasn’t having that, I was so angry, like I’d been repressing it all for ages and suddenly, there he was and it all came bubbling up.’

I waited while she swallowed more wine.