One particularly sleepless night Callum crawled into bed with Leah and put his arms around her. She didn’t say anything but, a little while later, when he turned over on his other side, she turned with him and curled her body into his.

From then on, they slept in the same bed as each other every night. Life gradually became bearable once more. Callum went out and found a temping job that just about paid the mortgage. He started to see some of the old crew again. Leah was his girlfriend now, so she came with him. She still wasn’t eating properly but as far as he could tell she had stopped making herself sick. She seemed contented enough. Although they kissed sometimes, they didn’t try to have sex. The arrangement suited them both. Callum took care that he and Leah never went anywhere where Tamsin and Will were likely to be. He had heard – from Leo again – that when it became clear that his friendship with Callum was definitively over, Will had started sleeping with Tamsin once more.

‘They’re – well, they’re a couple now, I suppose,’ said Leo. ‘It’s funny to see Will with a girlfriend. Are you okay, should I stop?’

‘No, go on. I prefer to know.’

‘Actually there’s not much more to tell.’ Leo frowned, thinking. ‘Except … I don’t quite believe in it, somehow. It won’t last. I almost get the feeling that Will’s doing it as a sort of atonement – to make it so that what he did wasn’t just a meaningless one-off. So that he didn’t screw you over for just a fuck. Am I making any sense?’

‘Not really,’ said Callum.

* * *

Tamsin’s reaction to the news that Callum and Leah were an item was not entirely rational. Again, she remembered the pact she had made with Leah on New Year’s Eve and became convinced that Leah had orchestrated the whole thing. She couldn’t stop thinking about Leah and Callum, wondering if they were happy together, if Callum was happier with Leah than he had been with her. Tamsin thought about how thin Leah had become and decided that Callum liked her because she looked like a child.

She was very unhappy indeed. She still fundamentally disliked Will; and despite all of the evidence against him, she found she was missing Callum.

Several times she thought about calling him; but even in those moments when she felt equal to the truth about his dismissal, she lacked the courage to speak to him. She herself had behaved too badly. So she didn’t call, and didn’t call, and after a while, it was too late.

Twelve

He has paid for the flat – a beautiful airy two-bed in Putney Bridge – so he could certainly afford to pay for a removal company.

But he wants to help her move in.