Yesterday had felt Arctic on every front. It had started with the official letter left on my desk, confirming my formal warning in black and white beneath a raised government seal. I shoved it in my drawer, but I could see from the way that Julia spent the day observing me that word had already reached her pregnant ears. Duncan was certainly making it pretty obvious how much shit I was in, his withering attitude showing no sign of thawing.

Meanwhile, there was no reply when I texted Sophie a pleading message – instead I just got a stomach-churning email from Mum mid-afternoon, reminding me how much my selfishness was tearing our family to shreds. It sent me back into my favourite, familiar toilet cubicle, my sobs swallowed down and silent so no one could add another crime to my rap sheet.

My loneliness felt absolute, so when Arthur texted, I was vulnerable. It was gone ten o’clock by then, and I was in my pyjamas, zoned out in front of a reality show stuffed with twenty-somethings in bikinis hoping to get it on. He’d just got back, he said, and I was on his mind. Would it be ungentlemanly to ask if I fancied a nightcap? It was sexy, I told myself, a mark of how much he liked me that I was the first thing he’d thought of when he’d touched back down on British soil. I didn’t want him to step into the messy chaos of my real life, so instead I decided his offer to pay for an Uber was pretty much the equivalent of a nobleman sending a horse-drawn carriage. And now, here I was, naked under the covers, while his hand made determined progress across the bumpy terrain of my body. There hadn’t been much deep and meaningful conversation last night, either.

‘Slow down,’ I said, smiling at him to soften the words. ‘I mean… obviously it’s lovely, but I’ve got to go. I’m seeing Amber before work.’

His hand stopped dead, withdrew. He stood up straight.

‘Right. Of course. Do you see her every week?’

What to say? He knew so much about me, and also almost nothing. He’d heard me vomit out my deepest secrets and most painful vulnerabilities, yet I still felt too awkward to insist on milk in my coffee so it wouldn’t taste like tar.

‘Yeah, I have been,’ I said. ‘I hope I still am.’ I wanted to blurt it all out, tell him how agonizing it was not to be speaking to my beloved sister, but I didn’t want him to think I was draining. ‘It’s complicated. It’s been pretty awful with my family since I got back to be honest.’