‘Right!’ I said. My heart was racing again, even though this was exactly what I’d asked for. I searched for a continuation of my sentence, but it felt as though my windpipe was knotted. Rachel leant forward, her hands gripping the arms of the chair.

‘Mum, I’m so sorry I’ve been such a mess the past couple of years.’ It was longer than that, but I kept my careful accounting to myself. ‘It looks like I’m so much worse than I am, though. I don’t want you to worry. There’s still all the thirtieths going on, and now the weddings have started up. The fact is, most of the time during the week I’m just on my own at home after work watching Netflix in my tracksuit bottoms.’

I didn’t know which half of that description was more sad. My eyes involuntarily flicked to the side table – the cluster of frames, the smiles of goals being achieved and love being cemented. I glanced back towards Amber, gratified to read in her face that she wasn’t buying Rachel’s PR spin on what normality looked like either.

‘Landmark moments can be hard, can’t they?’ she said.

Rachel gave a half smile of assent, her bottom lip trapped between her teeth from the inside. I knew that expression of old. She’d have it when we stopped her pocket money or refused to let her go to a teenage party where there were no parents to supervise. Amber continued, her voice a soft caress.

‘Life has seasons, even if we don’t want to admit it. There’s something they talk about in astrology, the Saturn return, which comes in when you’re twenty-nine. It’s a big time of transition, on every level. You’ll still be living in the aftershock.’

I fought down a wave of irritation – if I’d wanted to hire a tinpot astrologer I’d have googled one – but then I looked at Rachel. Her shoulders had dropped, her eyes had softened.

‘I know it’s ridiculous, but being past thirty feels – when I was twenty-one, thirty-year-olds felt ancient,’ she said. ‘It felt like a lifetime away.’

‘I understand that,’ said Amber. ‘It’s the decade for babies and husbands and…’ she wriggled her thin shoulders. ‘But it’s not as simple as that, is it?’

Isn’t it? I thought meanly. I was barely an adult when I got married – it had been far from perfect, but it was a decision. Sometimes in life you just needed to make a decision.

Rachel was shaking her head as if she couldn’t trust herself to speak.