“That will never happen,” said Priya. “Your cats will eat you way before you start leaking.”

“I’m so sorry.” That was Liz, who had been sinking farther and farther in the back seat. “I feel this is all my fault.”

“It’s not your fault.” Bridge twisted round. “You’re not the one cheating on me.”

“We don’t know he’s cheating on you. I should never have sent the picture. Jesus would not have sent the picture.”

Melanie glanced up from Baby J’s toes, which she’d been leaning over to this-little-piggy. “Saint Paul might have. I bet he’d have sent it straight to the Ephesians.”

“That doesn’t help,” cried Liz. “I’m a vicar. I’m not supposed to gossip. It’s just you’re my friend and I’m bad at keeping secrets.”

Blowing her nose into a tissue, Bridge made a visible effort to pull herself together. “You did the right thing. I don’t want to marry a man I can’t trust.”

“All is not lost, my little chou bun.” That was James Royce-Royce, and for a moment, it was genuinely unclear whether he was talking to Bridge or the baby. “My marvellous husband has just texted us a set of instructions. It’s a long shot but apparently if we spiral outwards, then we maximise our chances of seeing Tom, if he’s here.”

“And if he’s not here?” I asked.

James Royce-Royce looked apologetic. “Then we’ll have had a rather long afternoon in a rather hot van.”

“Truck,” corrected Priya.

But she followed James Royce-Royce’s instructions anyway, taking us on a spiralling path out to the edge of Harrow, then back in again, then back out, then back in. Then we stopped at a pub so that James could change Baby J and the rest of us could get something to drink before we got back in the truck and went back to spiralling.

The thing about spending hour after hour trapped in a metal box with six other people, one of them a baby, was that it made you acutely aware of all the times in your life when you’d been doing literally anything else. Like, for example, not not-quite-arguing with the man you’d somehow managed to stay in love with for the last two years. And who, miraculously, had somehow managed to stay in love with you.

Suddenly it didn’t seem that all important anymore whose turn it was to text.

I miss you, I sent.

I didn’t get anything back, which I knew rationally meant Oliver was in court, but which I felt emotionally meant I’d destroyed my relationship by being insufficiently committed to Pretty Woman.

“This is hopeless,” said Bridge for the ninth time.

“There’s no such thing as hopeless,” said James Royce-Royce, also for the ninth time.