‘Ads … I need to talk to you.’ Becky’s hand rests on the door latch, having let the last of their guests out of the house. But she hasn’t yet committed to her words and they are quiet and slight and she thinks they might go unheard. And perhaps that would be for the best.

‘Happy Birthday to me,’ sings Adam, making a small drunken pilgrimage from table to sink with a single plate – sauce and fork teetering on its edge. It’s painful to watch, mostly because she is stone-cold sober, but also because it will take them ages to clear up his way. She watches him drop the plate into a large pan of water.

‘Oops,’ he says, as brown foam splashes over the edge. The pan had been soaking after he’d drunkenly promised to make everyone caramels for pudding. He’d poured half a bag of sugar and some water into her best pan, put it on a high heat and turned the contents into a shining gold gloop. In the moments he was performing his victory dance, much to the amusement of the crowd, the caramel had stuck blackly and viciously to the bottom of the pan. The pan was unsalvageable really but Becky had thrown it quickly under the tap, like treating a burn on human skin, stifling her frustration and the urge to say anything because, along with most other items in that kitchen (and now Maisie’s new trainers) Adam had sweetly and generously paid for it. It would have been churlish to say anything at the time, churlish even to say anything now, on a night when he is happy and humming contentedly, basking in the glow of having spent an evening surrounded by his oldest friends.

And so she’d let her annoyance dissolve. Besides, the pan had been a good, momentary distraction from her worry that their guests would ask her about Matthew. But they live and work in different worlds and it didn’t come up. Maybe, she thinks, it’s not really a story outside the industry? And as they all talked about haircuts and politics and that time they went camping (Becky wasn’t there, she’d been caring for Maisie after she had her tonsils out), she was working out when and how to share the burden with Adam after everyone else had gone home to their beds.

She needs to talk to someone, and he is her someone.

As she watches Adam take on the portering of the next plate, she has got as far as planning her apology for not saying anything sooner, and how she feels ashamed for that, but that also no one can be sure of what really happened.

Please just let me talk.