‘They looked like a couple,’ she said, simply. ‘I came in and stood at the far side of the bar, and I could see them across from me. They had a table by the wall, one of the high-up ones, and she was all coiled round this high stool, wearing a jumpsuit that was slit real low down the front. She was laughing a lot and touching his arm all the time. You know.’

I remember that shivers started to run through me. And fucking Drunk Louise, who I needed so badly right then, was nowhere to be found. She’d clearly scampered away to the bar and left me to deal with this shit.

I didn’t want to know any more, but I felt unable to stop asking questions.

‘How did he look?’

April shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I guess like he was enjoying it.’

‘Did they … kiss?’

‘Not that I saw, but it was all there in the body language.’ April gave me a look that was full of sympathy and anger in equal measures. ‘What you need to know is that he’s a fucking idiot, OK? You deserve so much more, and he deserves hell. She’s the vainest person I’ve ever met.’

I nodded, and folded my arms round myself. ‘Do you think she wants him back? You know … properly?’

‘For now,’ April said, ‘yes. But only so she can win. She feels like she lost.’

‘How?’ I asked. I could feel myself getting tearful, and I decided to swallow it down with vodka, which was what we seemed to be drinking now. ‘How did she lose? She left him.’

‘She lost because he moved on,’ April told me. ‘She lost because her fantasy of him pining after her for years got overturned in a few months, and she didn’t like it.’

‘She got married,’ I said.

‘That doesn’t matter a damn,’ April said. And actually, April’s pretty good at weighing people up, something I think even you would admit. I trust her on Dina. ‘Winning is everything. She didn’t want to actually be with her new guy. He was a rich married man, and she wanted to prove she could break apart his marriage. And now she wants to prove she can break yours apart, too.’

All of it chimed with everything I’d always thought about your ex-wife, Niall. The stuff I’d never wanted to let on to you. If you’ve ever doubted why April has always meant so much to me, you could put a lot of it down to her taking my side. Mine. She sees through your ex-wife like she’s transparent.

Something bubbled up in me, then. A huge feeling of resentment, all of it directed at you, not her.

‘She didn’t force him to go for a drink and – and whatever else …’ I shook my head. ‘He’s a fucking arsehole, too.’