‘That’s right, you had those scratches down your back.’ I can see it so clearly in my mind.

‘They were just long nails,’ says Joel, shaking his head. ‘You’ve blown this way out of proportion.’

‘I looked like I’d been mauled by a tiger. I couldn’t take my shirt off outside for a week; my tan totally faded.’

‘Didn’t you still sleep with her a few times after that?’ Joel rolls his eyes and tops up his drink.

Soph starts to cry-laugh.

‘Did I? I think I had Stockholm syndrome. But hey, why am I the only one that’s getting dragged through all this? That summer we were all guilty of some shockingly bad lapses in judgement.’

I find myself looking at Joel and he stares hard back at me, causing me to shiver.

‘Soph, what about the time you—’ starts Douglas.

‘No, don’t tell that story,’ she says, holding her hands up.

‘You don’t know what I was going to say.’

‘But I bet it was nothing that I’d want Brett to overhear.’

‘Are my ears burning?’

I turn towards the house and my mouth drops open. All this time I’ve been curious to meet the man who tamed Sophie. I imagined he’d have shaggy hair, an old band T-shirt and sleeves of tattoos, exactly the type she used to go for, but I couldn’t be more wrong. He’s wearing long blue shorts and a fitted floral shirt. He’s cleanly shaven with neatly styled blond hair and not a tattoo in sight.

‘Sorry, everyone. Late night last night. I was playing a proms in the park.’

I’m stunned; I’d assumed when Soph said that he was a musician that he was in a band, not a classical musician.

‘I did tell him that he didn’t need to get up early with Alfie this morning.’

‘You needed your sleep,’ he says, giving her a quick kiss, before making the rounds. He shakes the boys’ hands and then turns to me.

‘Ah, you must be Edie, so nice to have you here.’ He gives me air kisses on both cheeks. ‘Now, what didn’t Soph want me to hear?’

The evening passes in a blur of stories and half-baked memories interchanged with anecdotes from the others’ meet-ups over the years. I try to ignore the little pangs of jealousy at how well they all still know each other, thinking about how, if things had been different, I might have been there too.

Alfie’s gone to bed, and we’re still sitting outside. Brett’s got the firepit going and we’re all wrapped up in Soph’s blankets as, despite the sunshine this afternoon, it’s still chilly in the evening.

Joel and I haven’t spoken to each other since our interaction earlier. We’ve tried to ignore one another as much as we can, which is fine by me.