‘Do you remember what you said the first time we met?’ said Rachel.

‘Yeah,’ I said, though in truth I did only vaguely. ‘It was in the churchyard.’

‘Yup,’ she said.

I remembered that much. I think I’d been walking round, looking for somewhere to sit and eat lunch, but all the benches must have been occupied and the grass wet. I’d done a couple of circuits, then – that’s right – I’d heard 33someone calling from near the eucalyptus tree.

‘You said I could share your bench,’ I said. ‘You said, I recognise you, you’re Paola’s cover.’

‘Yeah,’ she said, smiling. ‘And you sat down, and it had been raining earlier, and the eucalyptus leaves smelled all sweet and fresh, that way they do – and you breathed it in and threw out your arms and said, It smells so new, doesn’t it, as if you really could begin again. And we clinked forks and said, To new beginnings.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. I’d been determined to make the agency work: to be outgoing, easygoing, to be a new and better version of me.

I felt suddenly and indescribably sad.

Rachel put out a hand and touched my cheek.

‘Rach?’ I said.

‘You know your cheeks are flushed,’ she said. She smoothed my growing-out fringe behind my ear and I didn’t know what to say. She stroked my cheek again, upwards, with the backs of her fingers, then downwards with her fingertips. ‘You look so beautiful, you know.’

My heart stopped in my chest, then started going at double the speed.

‘Hang on,’ I said, a sort of panic and revulsion rising, not at her, exactly, but at this, at all of this, at the mess I was making of everything.

‘It’s ok, babe,’ she said, ‘this is Shoreditch. No one gives a fuck.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘no, it’s not that,’ and before I’d even finished saying it she’d seen it in my eyes. 34

‘Oh,’ she said, and took her hand away. Then, ‘Seriously?’ she said. ‘Shit. Oh, fuck.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Rachel, I’m sorry.’

‘But, hang on,’ she said, then she stopped and laughed and shook her head. ‘Ok,’ she said. ‘Ok.’

‘I didn’t,’ I said, ‘I mean, I didn’t mean to—’

‘We’ve been,’ she said, ‘I mean, every lunchtime for the last, what, month?’

There was a long, horrible silence.

‘Look,’ she eventually said, and drained the last of her drink. ‘Let’s not say another word about it. This is on me.’

‘Not at all,’ I protested, feebly and insincerely, as she got up to pay.

The toilets were thin-rimmed metal bowls, without even seats. I slid down the wall divide and squatted there and wondered was I going to throw up.