Nick seemed to select his words carefully. ‘I’m choosing this, okay? We both need to choose this now. Let’s make Paris a new start.’

Esther had sent me some feeble text message saying that she was leaving town this weekend, which I’d ‘liked’ instead of replying to. Modern life was so ridiculous: it had started making me weary in some profound, existential way that I’d never experienced before.

‘Fine,’ I said, applying a thick coat of red lipstick that made me look more like a sad, crumpled clown than a femme fatale. ‘Full steam ahead to the city of love.’

I knew in my bones that we shouldn’t go.

I’ve never really forgiven him for the fact that we did.

RACHEL

I stood on the cold Soho street, looking down the metal stairs into the cramped cocktail bar that Kitty had chosen for my sister’s hen night. It was so ridiculous, fantasizing about what I would have chosen if I’d been given the task – how well it would have demonstrated my love for her, my forensic knowledge of who she really was. It was all a futile attempt to paper over my bottomless grief.

I took a couple of steps down the curved, wrought-iron stairs, and then froze. A couple of pissed girls squeezed past me, squashing me against the cold metal railings. At least I hadn’t gone to the bottle these past few days – my pride in that fact somehow propelled me down the rest of the steps.

I stepped into the bar, looking around. Kitty had reserved a nest of couches at the back, helium balloons weighted down on the tables, ice buckets filled with bottles stretching across. My sister sat in the middle of a gaggle of her best friends, a plastic tiara perched on her head at a jaunty angle, a flute of Prosecco held in her left hand. I remembered when we found out she was left-handed, how her spidery infant scrawl would run the wrong way down the lines of her school books, to Mum’s eternal frustration. All of these little, precious pieces of her that added up to a whole person, that I now had to commit to a memory box held deep inside.

I approached the table, taking in the gang before Sophie saw me. No sign of Mum: thank God I’d called that right. Then Sophie looked up, her face freezing in shock. The rest of the group followed her gaze, and the ones who obviously weren’t up to speed started drunkenly shrieking at me to sit down and grab a glass. I’d never felt more sober.

‘I’m sorry to turn up like this,’ I said.

Her best friend Kitty, a bit of a prefect from Owl Class onwards, glared at me. The intimidation was offset by the lurid, flammable ‘Bride’s Best Mate’ sash that was slung across her black dress.