‘He’s trapped, you know. Apparently, the whole relationship had run its course before she killed that boy, but then she had the breakdown and there was nothing Dom could do but sit it out and wait for her to get better so that he could ditch her.’

‘But it’s been months.’

‘Indeed. As I say, poor Dom.’

Maybe that was it? Had he only stayed until he was sure she was stable enough not to harm herself? Pip couldn’t believe he’d think like that. At no point since the accident had she been suicidal. But did Dominic know that? She wasn’t sure he knew her at all.

‘Pip, sweetie, are you all right?’ her mother said, interrupting her thoughts. She laid a hand gently on top of Pip’s and the touch of her skin brought Pip back to herself. They were still sitting side by side, jammed together with nowhere to move. Suddenly it felt too close. Pip needed to get out, to create a space round herself, to bring down her own personal forcefield to protect herself. She shuffled forward on the sofa until she could stand up and escape.

‘I’m okay,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll go upstairs. I just need to . . .’

Without elucidating further, she slipped from the room. She felt as insubstantial as a waft of smoke, as if she were so fragile it would just take one sneeze and Philippa Rose Appleby would be gone.

‘Shout if you need anything,’ she heard her mother call after her.

Pip took the wooden steps to the first floor two at a time, barging into her room and banging the door shut behind her just as she had done many times before; so many stairs flounced up, so many doors banged. Sometimes it felt as if the last ten years of her life, what she had become, what she had achieved, had all just melted away. No one here really understood her life as a barrister. Her father was as much in the dark about what she did as her mother. She had once heard him telling someone that she defended murderers for a living, his chest puffed up as he spoke and his eyes casting round the room, making sure everyone was listening to him. She had lost count of the number of times she had tried to explain that there were different kinds of barristers and that neither she nor any of her colleagues were involved with criminal law. To start with, she had been frustrated that her father took so little notice of her other life, her real life, that he couldn’t explain it properly to others, but when she had seen the look of pride on his face as he recounted the particulars to the enquirer she had had to reconsider. Did it really matter that the details were muddled as long as the main points were correct? Her father was proud of her life in London, even though he didn’t understand it. Wasn’t that enough?