‘I hope so.’

Alan lifts himself up onto his toes and jiggles up and down. ‘I feel like today is the first day of the rest of my life. I’ve chosen my new name. Did I tell you? Phoenix, like the bird that rose from the ashes. I’m going to be a new me, a better me. It’s like, this is literally what I’ve been waiting for for the last twenty-two years of my life and—’

A shadow looms over them.

Damian, dressed in black jeans and a grey hoody, nods at Jenna. ‘Could I have a word?’

She shakes her head, but then a thought hits her. The sweat lodge ceremony is about healing, gaining new wisdom and purifying the mind, body and spirit. When she steps inside she wants to leave her old life behind, and that includes all the crap with Damian.

‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Let’s go outside.’

They draw to a halt behind the marquee, Damian with his arms crossed over his body and Jenna with her hands buried in the pockets of her dressing gown. Standing between the marquee and a low wall, they’re partially sheltered from the icy wind but she can’t stop shivering.

‘What are you doing?’ he asks.

‘I would have thought that was obvious.’

‘I’m not talking about the ceremony.’

She can hear the slur in his voice, see a shine to his eyes that isn’t caused by the wind.

‘What are you talking about, Damian?’

‘Why him? A man who beats his assistant. Why would you go there?’

‘He didn’t hit her. It was the other way round.’

‘And you believe that?’

‘Yes. I do.’

And she does, unequivocally. Before she left her last session with Tom, the one where they made love, she’d asked him why he’d used the word ‘complicated’ to explain his friendship with Kate.

Kate was unlike anyone he’d ever met, he’d said, as he pulled on his clothes. She was strong but broken, feisty but vulnerable. Back when she was just a member of his little self-help group she’d confided in him about her childhood and it was one of the most traumatic stories he’d ever heard. Her parents had separated when she was ten but her father had struggled to come to terms with the break-up. Jim was a volatile man, a drinker and deeply paranoid. He’d go through the bins, tearing correspondence and bank statements into tiny shreds because he was convinced the neighbour would go through their rubbish and discover how much debt he was in. Kate’s mum, Annabeth, couldn’t cope and fled to her sister’s with Kate.