She grabbed her phone. There were two more messages from Ned, as well as a missed call. She ignored them and pressed the camera icon, then held it up and leaned towards Brenda.

‘Say cheese,’ she said, and took the photo.

Alice lay on the bed, a bottle of beer between her thighs. She and Brenda had stopped in a small supermarket on the way home from a swim in Rydal Water and picked up some drinks and hotdogs to, as Brenda put it, ‘pre-game it’, before they went out.

They had heated up the hotdogs in the youth hostel kitchen and headed up to the room to get ready; Brenda was in the shower.

Alice sipped her beer, aware that she was smiling. A lazy day mooching about in the sun, then a purposeless dip in a lake, with cheap hot dogs for dinner and beer in the room: Ned would never have agreed to spend a day doing that.

It would have been a waste. The beers would have to be some kind of special Lakeland ale, dinner had to be an event, the day had to be spent wisely.

And there was a place for Ned’s approach. She appreciated his interest in going places and seeing things and making sure nothing was wasted, but what he didn’t see was that relaxing and doing nothing wasn’t necessarily a waste.

It was fun. And that was enough.

She sat up and reached into her rucksack for her phone. She had heard it buzzing in there all day but had ignored it. She felt bad for Ned, but she couldn’t answer all his calls and reply to all his messages. It would set a precedent she couldn’t live up to.

She felt a mixture of sympathy and annoyance when she saw the missed calls – nine of them – and the multitude of messages. He needed to back off. She dismissed them and opened Facebook.

Nellie had posted a photo of her and Mads in front of the Sydney Opera House.

Tourist photo cliché, but it really is amazing!

God, she wished she’d gone with them. She couldn’t blame Ned – in the end she was her own person and so she should have gone, but that didn’t stop her resenting him for making it so difficult. In many ways that had been the beginning of the end. Looking back, the signs were there, but that was when she first started to really feel trapped.

She opened a message thread to Nellie.

Hi! Glad you’re having a good time. Me and Ned broke up (don’t worry, I’m not sad – I know, weird, right??? I’ll tell all later.) so I’m in Ambleside alone. With new friends, actually. One Aussie called Brenda. Photo attached. Have a great trip and safe travels. Tell Mads hi. Love you both. Axxx