Then Lisa leaned closer; lowering her voice, she said: ‘My dad made him take that job. He’s been giving Cal a really hard time since the exam results. They keep having these massive rows, Dad calling Cal an embarrassment and a waster, saying he’s ashamed to have a son who’s thick and useless.’

‘God. Really?’

‘He told Cal that the job in the tennis club would be suitably humbling and that if he felt demeaned having to wait upon his friends and their families then so much the better. You know, he’s not just serving drinks and that. He also has to clean out the locker rooms, the toilets and everything. Dad said that if he didn’t take the job, he’d have to find somewhere else to live.’

‘That’s awful.’

‘You’ve no idea. Dad hits him sometimes.’

‘What?’

‘Don’t tell anyone I said that—’

‘I won’t.’

‘The atmosphere at home has been toxic.’

Lisa looked down at their hands ploughed into the bowl full of flour, the half-formed dough. She suddenly looked like she might cry.

‘I don’t know why I couldn’t just pick up the phone and talk to you about it,’ Lisa admitted. ‘We used to spend hours on the phone. So why is it so difficult now?’

Beth shrugged but didn’t trust herself to speak.

‘Do you hate me?’ Lisa asked, and Beth shook her head, no.

She thought back to the phone call after Sasha’s party, Lisa ringing to check she was okay, and how Beth had started screaming, accusing Lisa of abandoning her, yelling that she was spineless and two-faced, shallow and weak. She had grown hysterical, but even then, she had known it wasn’t the grand betrayal that she had made it out to be.

Her anger had cooled, and then fear set in. Days later, a cold conversation on a bench in Bushy Park, Lisa’s spaniel Daisy straining impatiently on the lead, while Beth tried to account for her behaviour on the phone. Lisa sat stony-faced while Beth gabbled on about feeling threatened by Lisa’s new closeness to Sasha and Nicole, how she worried about losing her friend, but Lisa had just squinted at her in the slanting light, an eyebrow tilted with scepticism. That was when Beth told Lisa that she loved her. That she missed her. That she was closer to Lisa than anyone else in the world.

Lisa had listened, the dog’s tugging on the lead growing stronger and more agitated. Finally, she’d let out a small huff of impatience or frustration and said:

‘You’re too intense, Beth. You expect me to be everything to you and it’s too much. Sometimes I just feel smothered.’

‘I know. I’m sorry. I’ll try not to be as intense. I’ll give you more space.’