Jenna smothers a gasp with her hand. She didn’t imagine it, the attraction between her and Tom; Kate noticed it too. It was there, the connection between them, the first time they met. It was after his London seminar and he was mixing with everyone in the lobby. A gaggle of women had congregated around him and Jenna had waited until they’d all drifted away before she stepped forward to say hello. She felt sorry for the other women with their tittering giggles and simpering smiles. They’d fallen for his onstage persona but she wasn’t that easily charmed. She hadn’t booked her place to fall in love with the man on the stage. She’d turned up because she was desperate. Her life had fallen apart, her family didn’t care and she didn’t want to share something so private with her friends. She didn’t know who else to turn to.

She’d almost scrolled straight past Tom’s advert when it appeared on her Facebook feed but five words caught her eye ‘I Can Save Your Life’. It was gross, arrogant and offensive but she still clicked on the link. She read about Tom, his history and how he’d discovered the five secrets that could turn anyone’s life around. She clicked away again. She wasn’t desperate enough to turn to a stranger for help, and definitely not one that advertised his seminars on Facebook.

But later that evening, after a bottle of red wine, she found herself thinking about that line ‘I Can Save Your Life’ and she Googled Tom Wade. She clicked on one of his YouTube videos, just to confirm to herself that she was right about him. Then she watched the next video. And the one after that. When she woke up in the morning, on the sofa, with two empty bottles of red wine on the floor beside her, she checked her phone. She had an email, confirming her place on the next SoulShrink one day retreat in London. She wasn’t going to go. She really wasn’t. But then she did.

‘I’m not trying to fuck anyone,’ Tom says now.

Kate gives a short, sharp laugh. ‘So it’s already happened, has it? Nice. What did you do, take her to the cliff edge and pound her as the sun set? How romantic of you.’

‘Stop it!’ Tom’s shout bounces off the walls, followed by the sound of shoe leather scuffing against stone and grunts from between clenched teeth.

‘Get off me,’ Kate says.

‘Not until you calm down.’

‘You don’t get to tell me what to do.’

‘Calm down, Kate.’

There’s a sound, the sharp sting of a slap, then a terrifying silence. Jenna breathes into her hand, too shocked to move. Should she step round the corner and say something, or run in the opposite direction?

‘Say sorry.’ Kate’s sharp tones cut through the silence.