Afterwards, in Cass’s car, she dug out her phone and switched it on to scroll through the myriad messages and notifications waiting for her on the screen. She’d refused her publicist’s suggestion that she join Facebook, but had begrudgingly agreed to be a presence on Twitter, and it still amazed her how something so essentially trivial and self-referential could be held in such fawning esteem by so many. However, each day she garnered new followers, and whenever she posted something it was immediately ‘liked’ and retweeted again and again, and if she didn’t have a solid core of humility and good sense running through her, she might have begun to believe she was loved and adored by thousands. It was all cobblers, she thought, but needs must.

‘I’m going to please Jade and tweet about the wonders of Woman’s Hour,’ she said to Cass.

‘Good girl, that’s the spirit. You did well back there, darling, you sounded très switched on.’ She reached out and turned on the radio, and the car was suddenly filled with Motormouth Maybelle singing ‘Big, Blonde And Beautiful’. Cass whooped and joined in; Ali groaned.

‘Really?’ she said. ‘Hairspray?’

‘All hail, Queen Latifah,’ Cass said, turning it up.

Ali laughed and said, ‘You really should do musical theatre,’ then she looked back at her phone, running her eyes down the list of notifications.

‘Oh,’ she said suddenly, and her voice was strange.

‘What?’ said Cass, immediately alert. ‘Trolls?’

‘No, no,’ Ali said. ‘No. No.’

‘That’s a lot of “no”s.’

Ali was silent. Dan Lawrence followed you.

‘Ali?’

She was looking at Dan’s face now – a straightforward photo, no gimmicks, just him in a white T-shirt, looking directly at her – and after all this time, after all these years, he was utterly familiar. Daniel Lawrence. Oh, heavens, she thought. She forced herself to take a long, deep breath, but it shook on the exhale and gave her away.

‘Ali? What’s wrong?’

She stirred herself and managed a smile. ‘Oh, nothing, nothing, a name from way back, that’s all. Took me by surprise.’

She tapped on Dan’s name to open his profile, and then stared at the screen of her phone.

‘I’m at a severe disadvantage here, babe,’ Cass said. ‘I can’t see what’s grabbed you.’

Dan Lawrence.

Daniel Lawrence.

Daniel. That lovely boy, a man now, and there he was, smiling at her again.

‘Ali?’ Cass said, worried now, because her friend was staring at her phone in a most uncharacteristic manner, and she didn’t answer, but was gone, temporarily: lost, somehow.

‘C’mon, talk to me,’ Cass said, and switched off Maybelle. ‘What you looking at?’

Ali still didn’t speak, but because they’d stopped at a red light, she tilted the screen so that Cass could see.

‘Mmm, nice,’ she said. ‘Right up my alley. Great stubble. Who is he?’

‘He was Daniel,’ Ali said.