Until I opened the message, it could say anything. It could be an apology or a declaration of love. It could say ‘I’m good thanks’ and nothing else ever again. It could be a wedding photo, a christening announcement, that GIF of the husky that looked like it was telling you a terrible joke. I could delete it now and never know. Or I could open it and live with the consequences.

Shuffling away from my parents, I opened the message.

Doing anything tonight?

I looked back the bar where John was happily chatting away with Adrian’s mum and silently cursed him and his precognitive powers.

Not really, I replied quickly. Fancy a drink?

CHAPTER NINE

It took me exactly four minutes to make my excuses, get out of the party and into an Uber.

For three years, I had dreamed of what would happen if I ever saw Patrick again and there were a thousand variations on the theme. I imagined walking past him on some romantic street, usually Paris (because it was my fantasy and why the hell not?) and I would always be bundled up in a fabulous coat, walking by the river at night, trees filled with twinkling fairy lights. We would spot each other at the exact same moment, stunned that fate had delivered us back into each other’s lives, and time would stand still, right up until we fell on each other, lips on lips, body to body, heart to heart.

On other occasions, I imagined myself opening the post, only to find a long handwritten letter from him, an epic essay in his beautiful handwriting, telling me how much he missed me, how he still loved me, how he couldn’t go on another day without me, and then, as a perfect single tear fell down my face and dropped onto the letter, there would be a knock at the front door and Patrick would be waiting, with red-rimmed, pleading eyes. ‘Did you get my note?’ he’d ask and then we’d collapse into each other’s arms, never to be parted again.

And then there were the nights I lay awake, staring at my ceiling and dreaming of tearing his testicles from his body and gouging his eyes out with a rusty spoon.

My feelings were complex.

Memories, possibilities and worst-case scenarios all raced around in my head as the Uber I’d splurged on rolled to a stop. It was like Christmas morning, my birthday and the first day of the school holidays all mixed together with exam results day and that one horrifying time I had to take a pregnancy test after sleeping with someone I met on holiday in Ayia Napa. The best of times and the very, very worst of times. I wondered if Charles Dickens had ever been on an 18-30s holiday of his own. If he hadn’t, he ought to be made to revisit that statement.