“You did? You had wine?” Georgie looked surprised but quickly went on, “Well third date is perfectly acceptable. I bonked Tom something stupid on our third date and that didn’t put him off.”

“Really?” Megan asked.

“Yeah, at that hotel in Brighton, remember?”

“Oh yes, that’s the one I was at a few weeks ago.” Brendon let out a long, low sigh as though many memories were coming back. “Big beds and enormous showers with all these little jets coming out of the wall and—”

“So tell me about the wine?” Georgie cut him off before he gave too much information as he was prone to doing about hot nights. “At Frank’s?”

“It wasn’t planned, we just got talking over a drink,” Megan said. “And it led to a kiss and…I guess Brendon is right. We’re getting to know each other.”

“So what happened last night?” Georgie asked. “Why the emergency yoga?”

“Come on, downward dog.” Brendon nodded at the screen. The purple tracksuit lady had her bum in the air and her hands and feet on the floor. Her long blonde ponytail lay like a coiled snake on her mat.

“Was he crap?” Georgie asked, manoeuvring into position. “Small…?”

“No…” Megan said, staring at her knees. “Nothing like that. It was perfect, he was great and very well…”

“What?” Brendon and Georgie said together. “But what?”

Megan sighed and felt the blood rush to her cheeks. “I had that dream again, you know, the one where I’m running down the aisle and my heel gets stuck. I get stuck. It’s horrible, panic sweeps through me. These disgusting hands from the graveyard are trying to pull me down into the darkness. No matter how hard I struggle I can’t get away and Dylan is there. He’s coming towards me, hand outstretched. He wants me, to keep, for all of time. I hate the look in his eyes, he’s furious at me for running.”

She paused and went onto her tiptoes the way Brendon was. The stretch in the backs of her thighs was nice—she was a little achy from her bedroom athletics the night before. “And then at the worst point of the dream, when Dylan grabs me and I have to choose between going underground into Hell or going with Dylan, I woke. For a moment I didn’t know where I was, that the dream had ended. I didn’t recognise the room, you know what it’s like, a bit disorientating when you wake up somewhere new, somewhere you haven’t seen in daylight.”

“Mmm, yep, happened many a time,” Brendon said, kicking his left leg out behind him and narrowly missing Gucci, who was weaving between them.

“And then of course I remembered. The whole night came flashing back. James and me and what we’d done and I just felt…so…like it was too soon, you know, after Dylan.”