I desperately want to say all this to my friend in this moment as I sit there, hugging her, rocking her gently as she cries into me. But how can I, in the face of Isla’s pain?

‘I think I should go and lie down now,’ Isla says, in a monotone, and starts packing up her things.

She does this sometimes. When we were younger we’d be having a nice time at a party and she would suddenly grab her bag and leave. A French exit? An Irish goodbye? I understand this time, though. We put the ends of the baguette and plastic cups in the bin and brush the dirty grass off our clothes.

‘You are so loved, Isla,’ I say, gently. ‘No matter what happens, you have me, and you have Bea and Cec.’

‘Thank you, Ol. You know, when we were younger, I just never imagined all of these problems. Adulthood looked like the dream.’

‘I know, me neither,’ I say, hugging her tightly.

‘People have started to look at me with pity. Society really wants us to get married, have two children and move to a house with a driveway still. I’m more likely to go and live abroad and travel more.’

Lily, 43

16

It’s late afternoon on a Friday and I’m planning to spend the evening getting drunk on the bottle of chilled rosé sitting in front of me on my desk. It was a gift from Gill because Chrissy Teigen retweeted one of my articles last week, and the website practically broke because so many people were clicking the link. It was an amazing feeling and it’s a pretty rare occurrence to have your article go viral. On that note I need to finish Gill’s ‘Do Millennials Want Kids?’ article – I’ve really started to enjoy the editorial tunnels I’ve been going down. It’s almost become a sport. It’s all I can think about and I have so many notes, more than I know what to do with.

I want everyone to leave the office, so I play some podcasts loudly as a hint. Everyone is slacking off, slumping in their chairs, writing personal emails, eating loudly at their desks, ready for the weekend. Someone is playing a Phil Collins song and Colin is starting to pour Buck’s Fizz into plastic glasses because the company has just met its quarterly financial target.

‘Beverage, m’lady,’ Colin says, planting one down next to my mousepad.

‘Thank you.’

‘Excited for the weekend? I am gonna get leathered,’ he says, knocking back the liquid.

‘Meh,’ I say. ‘To be honest Col, I’ve got sod all planned.’ Colin is literally the only person at work who knows the real me. He squeezes my shoulder and then disappears to the other side of the office, distracted by a colleague who has brought their new dog in.

I feel like it’s a taboo thing to say that I never really find the weekend that exciting. I prefer the working week more than the pressure of having a perfect two days outside of it. I put my headphones in and hover my fingers over my keyboard, as if I’m about to play a grand piano.