‘What?’ Lily and I answered in unison. I felt the steering tug on the car. ‘Concentrate on what you’re doing,’ I told Lily, ‘I’ll deal with this.’ I craned around to get a good look at Cora. She dropped back against the seat, then, and she was looking out of the driver’s side window. ‘Are you out of your bloody mind?’

‘Yes,’ Lily answered, ‘yes, she bloody is.’

‘What did I just say about concentrating?’

‘How can I?’ She rested her elbow in the open window of the car and made a fist to lean her head against. ‘After a shock like that?’

‘Oh, shut up,’ Cora finally protested. She leaned forward again. ‘Like you haven’t slept with a who’s who of bad decisions. You could put together a compendium on it. Besides, he’s good at what he does and he doesn’t want anything serious. He got checked before we—’

‘I should bloody think so!’ Lily interrupted but Cora carried on as though she hadn’t.

‘He got checked before we slept together and he tells me he isn’t sleeping with anyone else.’ She shrugged. ‘I really don’t see the problem.’

I saw Lily’s mouth drop open and I knew a mouthful of problems were only seconds away from filling the car. But I set a hand on her shoulder to at least delay the tirade. ‘He tells you he isn’t sleeping with anyone else? Does that mean, what, you’re exclusive?’ Hamish was known for having sex with anyone who didn’t shake him off; he’d never been selective about the women he’d taken home. For him to settle down with anyone seemed …

‘Christ no.’ Cora laughed, as though I’d suggested something really ridiculous. A curt and surprised sound. ‘I’m also telling him that I’m not sleeping with anyone else. But we’re about to get drunk on a girls’ night so …’ She petered out, and I wondered whether sleeping with someone else was an objective for Cora on this night away. ‘Look.’ She leaned closer to me then, cutting Lily out with a strategic turn of the shoulder. ‘You’ve got something you’re scared to tell me. I had something I was scared to tell you. But you still don’t have to tell me whatever it is you don’t want to tell me.’ She laughed. ‘I’m just making this a safe space, in case you want to.’

Cora had always been the middle ground of the friendship circle. She wasn’t quite Molly enough for marriage and domestication, but also not quite hard-edged enough to make it her lot in life to tear the patriarchy down, one man at a time, like Lily. Still, no matter which side she fell on at any particular time, I knew her reaction would be …

‘That utter bastard!’

… as soon as I’d told her about Rowan and Skye.