‘Liv, can I ask you something?’

‘Not if you want to know the answer.’ I attempt a joke at my own expense. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that when everything falls apart, it shakes the very foundations of your own judgement. You realize you can’t be certain of anything.

‘Why did you leave London and move two hundred and fifty miles away?’

I don’t know what I was expecting her to ask, but it wasn’t this.

‘You know why.’

I think about all the lunchtimes and breaks she spent with me in the staffroom over the past year, being the supportive girlfriend.

‘Humour me,’ she persists, her footsteps loud on the pavement.

‘I wanted to run away from everything,’ I say simply. ‘I wanted to disappear. To leave it all behind and make a new life for myself.’

‘Exactly.’ Naomi sounds slightly out of breath from the briskness of her walk. ‘So what’s the point of moving halfway across the country if you’re going to take your old self and fears with you? If you’re not going to take a few risks, try something new? You might as well have stayed here, in that case.’

I listen, feeling slightly defensive.

‘You’re wasting an amazing opportunity, Liv. How many people get the chance to cast off everything from their old life and start over?’

‘But that’s just the thing,’ I protest. ‘I didn’t want to start over. I liked my old life.’

‘I know you did.’ Naomi’s voice is sympathetic. ‘But there’s no point looking back. You’re not going that way.’

I fall silent. She’s right. Of course she’s right. And yet . . .

‘I’m scared,’ I hear myself say quietly.

‘It’s good to be scared. If you aren’t scared, you’re not doing it right.

‘Doing what?’

‘Life.’

There’s a pause on the other end of the phone and I gaze at the ribbons of flame making shapes in the fireplace, letting her words sink in.

‘We need to do the things that scare us – that get us out of our comfort zone. That’s how you know you’re alive.’

‘I wish I had your confidence.’

‘I get scared too. Remember when I was pregnant with Ellie? I frightened myself to death most nights, lying awake, thinking about the future, about being a single mum . . . but I also knew I had no choice, because the alternative of never being a mum was even more terrifying.’

I think back to all those talks we had in the staffroom together when she’d made the decision to go ahead. She was so determined, so brave, so open about it all; and yet sometimes I’d catch a glimpse of how scared she really was.

‘Mummy!’

There’s a girlish cry in the background.

‘You’re busy. I’ll let you go – say hi to Ellie for me.’

‘OK, but I’m not letting you off the hook. You can’t sit in that cottage by yourself all day and night.’

‘I’m not, I’ve got Harry to keep me company.’