After a cursory search for a chair, Tamsin gave up and pulled Leah down onto a little stone ledge outside a back entrance to the pub kitchen. Bunched up shoulder to shoulder, both girls suddenly felt how strange it was for them to be alone together like this. Tamsin offered Leah a cigarette, knowing it would be refused.

‘Warm enough? You don’t have to stay, I just thought you looked like you wanted out…’

‘No,’ said Leah. ‘I mean yes, I did. Thank you.’

‘S’okay.’ Tamsin took a long drag on her cigarette and washed it down with a mouthful of wine straight from the bottle. ‘Do you want some of this?’ She tipped the bottle towards Leah, expecting her to refuse again.

But Leah took the bottle with a grim little ‘thanks’. She drank deeply, three big mouthfuls, before handing it back to Tamsin.

‘That bad, huh?’

Leah missed the humour in Tamsin’s voice and answered her seriously. ‘It’s just – I don’t know – I can’t really—’ She sounded very upset. Tamsin reached over a hand to squeeze Leah’s knee.

‘No, I know, it drives me crazy when Cal goes all know-it-all. The two of them, it’s like some private club.’ Tamsin paused, registering the oddness of this conversation in which she and Leah were now suddenly on the same side, united against their boyfriends. Of course, she quickly reminded herself, she had never not been on Leah’s side. It was a point of personal pride with Tamsin never to despise women who were more attractive than she was. Apart from jarring with her feminist ideals, it struck her as a) ugly and b) a sign of weakness.

Yet these principles had never prevented Tamsin from feeling grotesquely oversized next to Leah. Tamsin lifted herself off the step slightly in order to rearrange her belt, tucking her small soft belly down and under the buckle. Now she felt neater, more contained. Although, she thought, glancing over at Leah’s legs, for the first time ever she wasn’t entirely certain that she wanted to swap figures with the younger girl. Even in thick black tights Leah’s legs were alarmingly thin. She had her knees pressed tightly together but the flesh of her thighs bowed inwards, not touching at any point.

‘He’s so good to me,’ Leah was saying, as if being good to someone were on a par with domestic abuse. ‘We’ve never had an argument, he’s…’ She wanted to say, he’s the only person who knows I’m terrible in bed and he doesn’t seem to mind, but this wasn’t possible, not with Tamsin, not with anyone, really. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘You guys – you’re friends—’