‘James knows him. Charlie Higham. He’s a right little toerag. Trust-funded up to the hilt. Got all the girls falling at his feet.’

I stared at the fine-boned face, the dyed blond hair falling just like his elder brother’s had as slowly he kissed the girl who clung so hard to him. I heard a rushing in my ears. I saw the bed in that hotel room, the carnage around it. I felt dizzy and sick. This could be no coincidence. I had to get out of there immediately.

I walked back to Jen’s flat. I needed to clear my head desperately after the heat and noise of the club, after Liam’s words. Nothing made sense: no one was being completely straight with me, not even Liam. I had to get back to see James, to make him tell me the truth.

Just past midnight in central London, the streets were still busy; streets I’d walked alone happily at all hours since moving here after college. I turned into the square where I’d once lived. Quieter here, I slowed my pace. A rattle of a bin, a fox, perhaps. The shadows drew in; it was dingy, not so many streetlights, the small private green in the centre in complete darkness.

I thought I heard a step behind me and turned quickly, but there was no one. Still, Jen’s warm flat seemed appealing now. Another noise; a door slamming somewhere. Someone running.

And then a low mournful whistling; it turned my stomach inside out. I was obviously delusional. Why would he be here now?

I paused. The whistling stopped.

My heart aching, I walked on, quickening my step now. My mind was playing tricks on me. Longing can do terrible things. I thought I saw something and I slowed for a second, and then I hurried past a shadow in a doorway.

Too late. I was pulled into the arch. I could smell sherbet.

‘What do you want?’ I said, but I was shaking. I hated him and myself for it, for my weakness. And yet I was overjoyed too.

And all these weeks I’d prayed I’d see him and all these weeks I’d imagined him so fiercely; imagined him in crowds, on buses, in fields, in my house. I’d projected us into a healthy future where we had been together … but he had never come.

And yet now here he was and I was rigid with something – fear perhaps. I was struck dumb … My mouth couldn’t catch up with my mind to form words. What to say and how to act when all I wanted was to crawl into his arms and find the peace I craved. The peace I’d never really had since adulthood. I stared at him blankly.

‘I came to say goodbye,’ he said quietly.