‘Oh, Ol, I’ll still be available. I’m not disappearing off the face of the earth.’

‘I’m excited for you. I am,’ I say, rubbing her arm.

‘Thank you.’ Cec looks so content. ‘C’mon, let’s go downstairs. Ooh, I can make you a posh hot chocolate with my new drinks kit from Liberty. It was a gift from Chris’s mum: she drives me insane, but at least she gives good gifts.’ She winks.

Seated in Cecily’s kitchen, I slurp at my hot chocolate, having eaten all the miniature marshmallows that were floating on top in record time. Suddenly, now feels as good a time as any to broach the break-up.

‘Talking of new beginnings …’ I say, with marshmallows still in my mouth.

‘Oh yeah?’ Cec asks, excitedly.

‘Oh, it’s not a good thing …’

‘Oh right, sorry.’

‘I don’t really even want to say it, to be honest.’

‘Go on …’

‘Jacob and I broke up.’

‘Huh?’ Cec can’t hear as her noisy kettle is making a weird sound and I guess I did have my mouth slightly full.

‘Jacob. And me. We … we split up,’ I say, more loudly this time.

‘No?’ Cec’s eyes widen in shock.

‘Oh god, I don’t want to stress you out; you’re with child.’ I fold my arms on the table then and hang my head.

‘Ol! You’re not stressing me out. When, what, why? When did this happen?’

‘Oh, really recently,’ I lie. ‘I didn’t tell you because, well, I wasn’t sure if it was definitely over. I mean it definitely is now. Haven’t heard a peep for weeks.’

‘Weeks? And you didn’t tell me?’ She looks genuinely hurt.

‘Sorry, I just … It didn’t feel like something I could say over a message, and I didn’t want to be annoying when you’ve been busy preparing for the baby.’

‘Oh fucking hell, Ol. Having a baby doesn’t mean I will forget that everyone else exists.’

‘OK, sorry.’

‘What happened?’ she says, handing me a piece of homemade cake.

‘We just realized that … we want different things.’

‘Do you want to talk about it?’

I look down at my mug. Cec’s Siamese cat Harvey wraps his tail around my leg, as if he knows I need comforting.

I take a breath. ‘Well, I guess we just had one last bad argument that seemed to be the final blow. The last available opportunity to get all those feelings off our chests, but we both knew there was no coming back from that. He accused me of having no emotions, using the people closest to me for story ideas to pitch to the magazine. He would often joke that – when something really terrible or really great happened – he could see the cogs of my brain turning immediately to come up with a headline or caption.’

‘Woah, yes, that is harsh.’

‘Do you think I do that? Mine people for their stories, for .dot?’

‘Not really. Not in a malicious way, anyway. You write what you know.’