For a second nobody said anything, but the awkwardness of the moment very much spoke for itself. Because how was I supposed to react to this? Here was Miles, smiling that shoe-salesman smile at me, flaunting his adorable fiancé like he was one of those puppies you keep in a designer handbag and acting like he hadn’t completely fucking betrayed me.

“Anyway,” I continued, “I should. I might. Yeah.”

I was just disentangling myself when the music changed, and “Tartarus” came on.

“Tartarus.” The breakout single from Jon Fleming’s multiplatinum album Pendulum of the World. As part of the hype for the second season of The Whole Package, my dad had given this series of powerful, heartfelt interviews about how his struggle with cancer had made him confront his own mortality and realise what really mattered in life. Somehow the fact that he’d never had cancer in the first place—that nobody had even told him he had cancer or given him any reason to suspect he might have cancer—had got lost in the noise, and he’d become this poster child for survivors everywhere. He was even doing a public awareness campaign for the NHS.

Anyway. Pendulum of the World was his album about how fucking wise and brilliant he was now he was a selfish old prick instead of a selfish young prick, and “Tartarus” was this navel-gazing dirge about staring into the abyss and coming back stronger that had won the bastard a Grammy and could entirely fuck off. Especially because the last thing I needed just when I’d had an unexpected run-in with the narcissistic ex who’d sold me out for short-term gain was to be reminded of my narcissistic dad who’d sold me out for short-term gain.

In an effort to distract myself, I looked down at my phone. My text to Oliver had somehow autocorrected from It’s okay, see you soon to Its okay see your document, which had prompted a series of replies reading:

What document?

Was that text meant for me or somebody else?

Lucien, is something wrong?

I’ll be there as soon as I can. If something is wrong, tell me.

I’m sorry I took so long.

And I should probably have replied, but I couldn’t quite face it. Fate or the universe or whatever had decided to rub my clearly happy and successful piece-of-shit ex and my clearly happy and successful piece-of-shit dad in my face within thirty seconds of each other. And while I was also technically clearly happy and successful, it felt a whole lot less clear with my amazing barrister boyfriend sitting in traffic while I was being introduced to fabulous, perfect look-how-engaged-and-beautiful-I-am JoJo and his Technicolor waistcoats and his sparkly ring.

Especially since, as I suddenly remembered, I was still wearing a crocheted vulva on my head.