‘Ready, beautiful?’ She held out a hand for me to take. ‘Pancakes? Because Thom’s does a gorgeous pancake stack and after last night, with work this afternoon, I’m in a place for some carbohydrates. What do you say?’

I laughed. ‘I’m in.’

Everything about it somehow felt familiar – even though there was so much neither of us knew. Thom’s, it turned out, was a fifteen-minute walk away and the crisp air of the morning blew away any dreamy eyes and cobwebs left over from the night before. Fred spoke to me like I was someone who knew her life and the characters in it – ‘Then Mum and Dad moved, took the dog with them down to Devon one weekend and decided, actually …’ – so I tried to do the same with everything I told her. But there was a sticking point when I realised just how much of my life revolved around—

‘Should we call him Rowan or hubby?’ she interrupted a stream of information where I’d tried to disguise his importance – but I’d obviously failed quite dramatically.

‘Rowan will do.’

‘Just here, hon.’ She gestured across the street and grabbed my hand as we crossed the road. ‘So you and he have been together for …’

‘Ever,’ I finished her sentence.

We came to a stop outside the café. ‘But now you’re …’

‘Apparently sleeping with other people.’

She cocked an eyebrow as she reached for the door. ‘Well, good news for me. Maybe not such good news for him. You’re a bit of a catch, Edi.’

I opened my mouth to brush the compliment away.

‘It wasn’t a question,’ she cut me off. ‘Just a statement. Now, in you go. If we’re going to talk about your fiancé then I’m probably going to need more carbohydrates.’

Her tone was jovial and her smile as wide as it had been throughout the morning. There wasn’t a flicker of a sign that she was uncomfortable. But how can I know? I recycled the thought, sandwiched around flashbacks of all the times Rowan had been upset about something – and told me what it was three days later.

‘Hey—’ Fred poked her head around me ‘—are you still with me?’

‘I think so?’