She hasn’t told Trent that she’s coming today for her jab, and she feels her heart fluttering with nerves about being caught out as she drives past the road that would lead to the house. She’d eventually replied to Trent’s text telling him it was too little too late. She’d pointed out that she wasn’t stupid and that, judging from the hour of his text, he’d been undoubtedly drunk. He hadn’t taken that well. He’d told her that she can’t just call time on their relationship without discussing it. He’d told her that it was unfair that she’d just upped and left without any explanation. She’d retorted that he’d been the one to trash their relationship. He hadn’t replied after that.

She indicates into the vaccination centre car park, impressed with how the system is in place to usher everyone through. She puts on her black mask, hoping that there’s nobody here who’ll recognise her. As she waits in line, she looks at her phone to avoid making eye contact with anyone.

Claire has posted a video of them all in the water this morning and Maddy feels a genuine pang to be back there with her gang. She’s jealous of them larking around in the sea. She wants to be in the sea herself.

She wonders now why she didn’t she move to the coast when she was younger and had the chance to bring up Jamie by the beach? He could have been a surfer, or a lifeguard. It could have been him tearing about on one of those beach buggies. He’d have loved that.

She likes the weather in Brighton, too. The fact that it announces itself on the horizon. When it rains, it really rains, then the skies clear. Here inland, the sky is disappointingly dull, like a whites wash that’s been mixed with a rogue black sock.

There’s a guy in front of her in the queue and when he reaches the marshal with the clipboard, he pipes up in a rehearsed kind of a way, ‘Just here for a little prick,’ with a comedy laugh and the usher, who can only be in his twenties, rolls his eyes at Maddy in despair.

Maddy walks quickly through the roped-off areas, answers her medical questions and is then shown inside to an area in the sports hall by the climbing wall. There’s a queue for the cubicles and she prepares herself to wait.

And then she sees her.

It’s Helen Bradbury. She’s in a marshal’s uniform, her chestnut hair tied back in a neat ponytail, but it’s her. As if sensing the scrutiny, Helen turns and they make eye contact just as Maddy is called into the cubicle. Maddy sees her eyes widen over her mask.

Why is Helen volunteering? She’s not a medic, but then she doesn’t need to be, to be a marshall. She used to have a big career in an insurance company, Maddy remembers, but that must have stopped for her to be here. Or is she just trying to virtue signal? Show she’s some kind of upstanding citizen? When in fact, she’s a home-wrecker.