I subscribe and pay for an electoral registry service that lists two Michael Talbots in the district council of Canterbury. It’s a starting point and I scribble the addresses down on the pad next to me, eager to start unravelling the dichotomy that’s become my life.

As soon as it’s a respectable enough hour, I ashamedly call the one client I have today and tell them I’m not feeling well and wouldn’t want them to catch it. It seems the more I lie, the easier it becomes.

Not wanting to stand out, I dress in a beige A-line skirt and white blouse, and throw a string of amber beads around my neck. With my hair pulled loosely back into a clip and oversized sunglasses on, I look like every other well-off Londoner who’s bought a holiday home in Whitstable in the five years since it’s become the place to be.

In the car, on my way to the first address on my list, I call Anna, just to check she’s OK, but it immediately goes to voicemail. I wonder where she is and what she’s doing.

I hope that she and Nick somehow managed to find some middle ground last night because I fear that if they couldn’t do it then, of all nights, then they probably never would. But my gut tells me they would have collided with each other head-on, clearly unable to traverse the most painful of reminders by themselves, let alone together.

I can’t take the chance of Anna feeling even more desperate than she was yesterday, so as soon as I’m done here, I’ll have to track her down and make sure she’s OK.

I park in Canterbury town centre and take a shortcut through the cathedral grounds. I’m reminded of the last time I was here. It was a couple of months ago, and Leon and I were with Shelley’s husband Dave to watch her compete in a choir competition. I’d gone to the bar to get us all a beer when, turning round with a plastic pint glass in each hand, I had bumped, quite literally, into Jacob.

‘Naomi!’ he’d exclaimed, clearly as shocked as I was.

I’d looked around furtively, searching both the people close to us and his face for a prompt on how best to deal with this situation.

‘My wife’s inside,’ he said, answering my predicament. ‘She’s in one of the choirs.’

‘Oh, right,’ I said. ‘Well, I wish her luck.’

He’d looked at me oddly, almost as if he was expecting something more, but I wasn’t keen on my bumping into his wife, any more than I imagine he was.

‘Good to see you,’ I said, moving away.

‘Erm, yeah, I’ll see you on Monday,’ he said after me.