Later that night, we are eating pizza straight from the box on the living room floor. “I need to tell you something,” he says between bites. “I… well, I kind of googled you. I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?” Pretty much everything I know about Leah has come from Google; it’s actually kind of helpful to know we’re sharing the same information source.

“It feels a bit stalker-ish. I just wanted to know more about you.”

“I wouldn’t trust everything you read on the internet though.”

“Of course not. I mean, you’re obviously not coeliac.” He raises an eyebrow at my slice of pizza. Jesus! Did everyone care about my wheat consumption? “But I get it. Personal and professional lives.”

I don’t want him to think I’m like that. That I would pretend to have something wrong with me for clicks and sympathy. But I can hardly tell him the truth.

I don’t sleep that night; I can feel the heat of his body in the bed next to me, hear the soft snuffling noises he makes, which aren’t quite a snore and are almost endearing. The edges of a plan flutter in the wind just out of my grasp. Is there another way this story could end?

After Tom leaves in the morning, I settle myself at Leah’s desk to try to keep some kind of handle on her life. Thank God for Zach! After the tirade of emails from Emma about me failing to provide bikini pictures, he had managed to dig up an older one of Leah in her yoga gear, her body contorted into a shape I could never dream of pulling off. He posted it yesterday: #yogaforlife and #yogaformindandbody and #summerfitspo and about twenty-five other hashtags. It had well over a thousand likes and counting. Emma was pleased and I wondered if I should give Zach a raise for doing such an admirable job keeping on top of Leah’s Instagram empire. Plus there were hundreds of comments and DMs from Leah’s fans; can you imagine if I didn’t have him to reply to them all?

But there is an email in Leah’s inbox that has been sat for two hours, just winking at me as I try to ignore it:

Your turn to host, darling!

Apparently, my sister is in a book club. And it is my turn to host them this evening. The email is signed off with one irritating little line. You know the drill xx.

I do not know the drill. Fuck.

It takes me most of the afternoon to figure out the logistics and research my fellow book clubbers. Time that could have been much better spent on the proper plan out of all this mess. But anyway. Book club turns out to be an opportunity for a bunch of semi-famous authors to get together and take photos of themselves looking intellectual while drinking wine and gossiping. I wonder if they realize how little of her book my sister actually wrote herself. They meet once a month and so I’m able to study the pictures from their previous sessions, identifying each one and pulling up a few facts about their literary careers.