Tamsin’s present to Callum was an electric vegetable slicer that he’d been planning to buy for himself. She and Callum both disliked compulsory gift-giving, and usually they made a point of exchanging Christmas presents that were purely functional. This year, however, Callum had broken the rules: he had completed, in secret, his giant landscape painting of the cliffs at Illfracombe. On Christmas Eve, he stayed over with Roz and Tamsin in Notting Hill (Serena, who alternated parents each year, was at Bertrand’s). In the middle of the night, he hung the picture on the wall at the foot of Tamsin’s bed with a sheet draped over it, so that she could uncover it in the morning after opening the stocking that Roz still liked to prepare for her.

Tamsin should have been delighted with the picture, but instead she felt angry. In a sense, Callum had cheated; next to the painting, her own present looked thoughtless and mean. The picture also reminded her – just as Callum hoped it would – of what a good time they’d had together on holiday. But rather than endearing him to her, this only served to emphasise the contrast between their current situation and the way things had been in Ilfracombe. The painting made it impossible to ignore what she had been ignoring for months: that she no longer liked Callum in the same way that he liked her. For several days Tamsin was miserable. Then she went back to being angry with Callum for forcing this terrible knowledge upon her with his stupid unnecessary beautiful heartbreaking picture.

* * *

‘And the penultimate question – penultimate, thass a fancy word for second last, for all you thick shits out there – the penultimate question for this round is, in what country, sorry county, in what county is Leeds Castle?’

It was New Year’s Eve: a bumper quiz-night at the Ploughman’s Rest.

‘An’ again,’ bellowed Dave, the quiz-master. ‘In what county is Leeds Castle? I’ll give you a clue – it’s not in Yorkshire cause Yorkshire’s a fuckin’ shithole!’

‘Remind me why this is funny?’ Tamsin asked, glaring at Will. It had been Will’s idea to come to the quiz; later, they were all going on to a house party in Fulham, but Will had persuaded them to start the evening here in the Ploughman’s in Putney. ‘Best pub quiz in town,’ he’d assured them. ‘The guy’s a liability, honestly, it’s hilarious. A total prick, you’ll love him.’

Tamsin hated being associated with Will in his red chinos and deck shoes. The two friends he’d brought along were, if possible, even worse: Jemima was a pashmina’d stick figure who insisted on drinking champagne, while Angus had made an embarrassingly conspicuous entrance halfway through the first round, wearing tweeds and a deerstalker with a skateboard tucked ironically under his arm.

‘It’s in Kent,’ whispered Chris excitedly. ‘Weird but true, Leeds Castle’s in Kent.’