She held me tighter as I cried it out, stroking my hair and making soothing sounds that I couldn’t quite make out.

‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I do understand. Why would you want to stay with him if this is how you feel?’

‘Because we’ve been together so long and I love him and it’ll get better and …’ I squeezed my eyes closed as I spoke, stymying my tears. ‘I don’t know which is more frightening, the thought of staying and things being like this forever or the thought of leaving and having no clue what I’m getting myself into.’

‘Oh, Fran,’ she sighed. ‘I think you do know.’

She didn’t understand. She couldn’t.

‘I can’t. I can’t leave him, I don’t know who I am without him,’ I whispered. ‘And he was there when my mum died. She loved Stew so much.’

‘That’s it, isn’t it? Juliette said. ‘That’s why you won’t go?’’

I took a deep breath in through my nose, determined to get myself under control. ‘One of the last things she said to me was not to mess things up with him. I know if she was still here now, she’d tell me to make it work.’

Juliette gave me a sad half-smile. ‘With all due respect to your mum, I don’t believe that. She wouldn’t want you to be unhappy, would she?’

I looked up at her, wiping my eyes with the edge of the duvet.

‘I want to say no?’ I replied. ‘But I’m not entirely sure. You didn’t know my mother.’

‘But I do know you’re allowed to be your own person, not just someone’s daughter or someone’s girlfriend,’ she said, soft but sure. ‘Who does Fran want to be? Where does Fran want to live? What does Fran want to do?’

‘Fran wants a wee,’ I replied, ducking under the duvet and pulling it up and around my head like a bonnet. ‘And to stop addressing herself in the third person.’

Juliette grabbed the edges of the duvet around my face, brown eyes boring into my blue ones. ‘Fran. I don’t know much—’

‘But I know I love you?’ I finished hopefully.

She rolled her eyes and sighed. ‘You have the musical taste of a sixty-year-old woman.’

‘Thank you,’ I whispered.

She pressed her fingers into my cheeks and squeezed until I felt my lips making a pouty fish face. ‘What I was going to say was, I don’t know much about relationships, but I do know about blaming yourself for something someone else did wrong and burying your needs so deep it’s practically impossible to dig them back up. You’ve got to work out what you want and grab hold of it before it’s too late.’