‘Not bad,’ I bat back quickly, before she has a chance to add, I haven’t seen you in ages. ‘Not much has changed since the last time I saw you.’ I chuckle so that Leon thinks I’m making a joke. This is already exhausting.

‘So what’s been going on with you?’ asks Leon, when I neglect to.

‘Well, the kitchen is finally finished,’ she says. ‘And the living room and hall have been redecorated.’

‘Great,’ says Leon. ‘Are you happy with it?’

I feel as if I’m on mute, unable to join this conversation for fear of saying something incriminating.

‘Yeah, the decorators did a really good job,’ says Shelley.

Leon nods appreciatively. ‘It might be worth getting them to look at the flat,’ he says. ‘Were you impressed?’

‘Yes, might be a good idea,’ I say, ignoring the last question so clearly directed at me.

‘You ought to come around and have a look,’ says Shelley.

I want to pretend she’s talking to Leon, but beads of sweat instantly collect on my upper lip when I realize she’s talking to me.

‘Oh,’ says Leon.

Everything stalls, as if I’m watching the scene in front of me unfold in slow-motion. Leon’s mouth opens, and I want to rush towards him and cover it to stop him from saying anything more. His lips move and a low-pitched sound buffers around my head, like a lagging tape recorder.

‘Didn’t you see it the other night?’ he asks, tilting his head to the side.

My eyes dart from him to Shelley, desperately trying to gauge how much attention she’s paying and whether I can stop the scales from tipping precariously against me.

She raises her eyebrows questioningly and I widen my eyes to silently plead with her not to push this any further. But how can I alert her and answer Leon with a single look?

‘I-I . . . don’t think you’ve seen it,’ she says, knowing full well I haven’t.

‘I thought you were round there the other night,’ says Leon. A rhetorical question he expects an answer to.

Shelley looks at me with a furrowed brow, waiting for me to take the lead. A flush of heat engulfs me as I try to work out how to navigate my way around this, though as the pair of them stand there looking at me, it seems my only option is to steamroll my way straight through the middle of it.

‘Well, I didn’t actually go in,’ I offer, unable to meet Shelley’s inquisitive gaze which I can feel burning into me. ‘So I didn’t get the chance to see it.’

‘But I thought you said you had a cup of tea,’ presses Leon.