She looks away, thinks about busying herself with the dishes. ‘I didn’t say that. I just pointed out that there are some things you can’t undo.’

‘You sound like you’ve thought it through. More than I have, at least.’

His words are disconcertingly calm and she thinks she can see a smile in him. ‘Not really, I haven’t thought about it at all, not at all in fact, I just …’

Adam drains a half-empty wine glass on the table. His lips are lightly pixelated with black from the red wine. ‘What did you want to talk to me about again?’

‘Nothing. It doesn’t matter. And you should speak to Kate, if that’s what you want. I just think you can’t have everything. You can’t want to move us all into a house together and then start going out with Kate. That would be ridiculous. That would be too much. For Maisie. It would be destabilizing. She won’t deal with that level of … whatever.’

‘You were completely opposed to the idea of us moving in,’ he laughs. ‘I thought that was off the table.’

‘Well, if it wasn’t, it probably should be, now that you’re marrying Kate.’

Adam is laughing a lot now but inside she feels a pure and shocking panic at the thought of losing even an hour of his friendship and his kindness, to Kate. His focus elsewhere. She wants to ask him for his advice, wants to tell him what’s been happening now, wants him to help her decode her past from her present, but now it is as if there is someone else standing in the room with them.

They look at each other for a moment, and then her phone buzzes in her pocket. She has set up a Google Alert for breaking news relating to Amber Heath. And now here it is.

Amber has spoken, typed words on a white notes app page, attached as two images to a single tweet that just says ‘My statement’:

My mental health is good at the moment. I am not a mad woman making wild accusations. I wish Ollie hadn’t said anything, honestly. I didn’t get to decide any of this but now I’ve got photographers camped outside my flat and ex-boyfriends getting offered crazy money to tell journalists I’m a nasty manipulative piece of shit. Matthew Kingsman is making statements about me in the press so I will make mine and then that can be that.