She had to keep on with the running, the diet tips, the body-positive advocacy, long after it had started to wear out her enthusiasm. James had more or less completely sacked off the driving, to be somewhere between her PA and her manager. He updated her diary with every invitation to speak, every personal appearance, trade fair, anywhere she might pick up new followers. Michaela did them all. She thought it was only for a while; that eventually she’d be so well established that she wouldn’t have to work quite so much. But something like the opposite was true. Self-employment turned out to be like that fable about the ever-replenishing feast. The more work you did, the more, somehow, you had to keep doing.

The trade fair on Sal’s wedding morning had been one of the biggest of the year. Michaela had a fifteen-minute slot on the main stage. It was sponsored by a running magazine whose editor wanted to feature her on the front page; he told her over the phone that ‘loving your body and stuff is really in at the moment’. They’d be done by eleven; the train from Manchester to Edinburgh wasn’t too bad, the wedding ceremony didn’t start till two. It was tight, but it would work. You always just about got away with these things. That was probably what she would have said.

‘This is what you have to do when you’re on the way up,’ she’d said, grabbing James’s hand. ‘Taking everything like this, grabbing it, even – even when there’s, you know, family stuff.’

‘I know, and of course I would normally … but this is not really “family stuff”, is it? It’s my sister’s wedding.’

‘We’ll be at the station on time, we’ve already got the tickets. We’ll be fine.’

He could, of course, have gone on his own – as the therapist remarked – but no, they did things together, they were a team. They did the morning session together. James made sure people subscribed, collected the contact details of influencers, signed them up to the socials then and there: all these tasks he’d taken to naturally, as his old computing instincts kicked back in. They were, sure enough, at Piccadilly station on time. As soon as they got into the station and she saw the crowds around the departure boards, though, Michaela felt her stomach drop into her boots.

She could see it any time she chose to torture herself: the sweat patches on James’s too-light shirt, the colour draining from his face. ‘Well, we’re not going to make it,’ he said, calmly, but with a tremor in his voice she hadn’t heard before. ‘We’re not going to be there in time.’

‘We could still make it,’ she said. ‘We could get a cab, we could—’