‘I looove this woman,’ he declared. He looked around at all of us. ‘Guys, we love her, right? Time for a standing ovation!’

Now everyone was on their feet, roaring and thumping the table. I stood too, legs shaky, the noise reverberating through my bruised body. When I felt a strong hand on the small of my back, I gratefully leant into its pressure.

‘It’s too much for you right now, isn’t it?’ said Arthur, his voice low and comfortingly authoritative. ‘You went deeper than anyone, I think. Come and sit in the living room and catch your breath before supper.’

‘Heroin,’ said Arthur cheerfully. ‘I don’t recommend it. I easily lost a decade.’

We’d been sitting in the lounge for twenty minutes now, the conversation flowing with an ease I hadn’t necessarily expected. The massage table had been cleared away, a few scattered cushions the only remnants of the traumas of the day. Arthur had found a scratchy blanket and put it around my shoulders. Did I imagine it, or had his hands lingered longer than necessary as he swaddled me in it?

‘Heroin?’ I repeated.

‘Have you never tried it?’

It was quite nice, not being the biggest sinner for once. It was also nice to be distracted from my gnawing dread at the prospect of real life imminently smacking me in the face once the retreat ended. There was only one day left.

‘No!’ I said. ‘I don’t mean to be insulting, but it’s kind of a posh boy thing.’

Arthur roared with laughter, then fixed me with a twinkly gaze, the laugh still dancing across his handsome face.

‘You’re probably right. Jesus, I’m such a cliché. Brought up by nanny, sent to boarding school as a snot-nosed eight-year-old, and then I’m shooting up when I’m barely out of short trousers.’

‘I don’t mean to take the piss,’ I told him. ‘You did really well. Surviving it, kicking the habit. I hope… well, I hope I manage it.’

I could feel it for a second, my cheekbone on the cold London pavement back in October, the paramedic kneeling on the ground, his face swimming into vision. Then my eyes locked on the thin beige carpet, where my body had slammed to the ground earlier. I couldn’t remember much beyond that moment – the moment when the darkness of what Mum had done to me fully eclipsed the light. My breath jammed in my throat, panic building. Was this really what liberation was meant to feel like?

Arthur didn’t seem to notice; there was a faraway look in his eye as his chunky fingers played with the neck of his wine glass. I forced a gulp of air into my lungs.