‘How do you put up with him?’ I asked Eva but she just smiled and laughed and they gazed at each other with the same gooey intensity I’d seen on both their faces every day since they’d met. Her birthday was in a week and it couldn’t come fast enough. The sooner Adrian put the beautiful diamond ring I’d helped him choose on her finger, the better.

‘We wanted to bring you this.’ Lucy stooped to produce a small gift bag from the tray underneath the pram. Underneath a very comfortable-looking selection of blankets, Baby Penny slept on, already well accustomed to ignoring our nonsense.

Lucy handed me the bag as my other friends cheered, John peering inside as I tore out the tissue paper in the top. It was a giant mug with something printed on the side.

‘“You don’t have to be mad to work here but it helps”,’ I read, holding it out in front of me. ‘Thank you, it’s exactly what I was missing.’

‘It was that one or My Boss Is a Bitch, Get Me Coffee,’ Sumi explained.

‘But I’m the boss?’ I said.

‘Exactly,’ Adrian replied.

‘Are you done?’ Lucy asked. ‘We were going to take you out for supper.’

The toilet flushed and the glazier re-emerged with sparkling clean hands. My poor towels. ‘I’ll be off then,’ he said, picking up his bag. ‘See you next week.’

‘Thanks, Dave,’ I called. He touched the brim of his baseball cap on his way out the door, completely ignoring the others.

‘You’re hiding other men in the loos now, are you?’ John asked, squeezing the back of my neck.

‘Yes.’ I tilted my head back into his hand and melted. ‘That was my lover, Dave. He might not look like much but it’s the experience you can’t beat.’

‘Oh, don’t let me forget,’ Sumi said as John clipped me gently on the back of the head and the others began piling back outside. ‘One of the girls at work is moving and she needs someone to sublet her flat for a couple of months. It’s tiny but it’s nice, not far from here actually. Remind me to give you her number.’

‘Anything that isn’t my mother’s yoga studio,’ I replied gratefully, grabbing my keys from my desk. Since shedmageddon, I’d been living in my parents’ house proper. All well and good while they were on their month-long second honeymoon but now they were home and three was most definitely a crowd. It was one thing to know your parents were going through a mid-life sexual renaissance, it was quite another to be in the next room while it was occurring.