And then he made the same noise as before, the nervous laugh that wasn’t a laugh, even though he wanted me to believe it was. ‘It’ll be good, yeah. Be good to see you properly, and I really do want us to talk.’ He took an audible pull of air. ‘Christ, everything is fine. I’m worried I’m making it sound like it isn’t now, but it is. I just want to see you.’ Then he rushed to add, ‘Bloody love you.’

I had the same nervous feeling in my stomach that I got before a smear test. Like someone was about to do something unthinkable but utterly necessary. I couldn’t marry that feeling with talking to Rowan, though. ‘Bloody love you,’ I said back, like nothing was the matter. But the feeling didn’t go away over the evening. Instead, I carried it to bed with me and I lay down next to it. That night, I slept with the same trepidation that I’d come to associate with speculums, lubricants and other grim but necessary things.

Chapter 7

In the days since Rowan and I had video-chatted, everything really had been normal. Apart from the Save My Soul that Cora had sent me late on Friday afternoon, asking me to meet her and Molly in The Circus Ring – personally dubbed, ‘The string of stores I’ll never be able to afford to shop in’ – a little earlier than planned. Out of my friends, they’d always been the two to have more money than sense. On the walk there, I entertained myself by making guesses at what extravagant purchases they were looking to buy. I assumed I’d be taking the role of: ‘Of course you deserve to spend that much money on a hat …’ When I eventually tracked them down, though, they weren’t huddled outside of a hat shop at all. Instead, they were outside Bliss – with its brilliant white shop front visible from the moon, if not further afield than that. I rolled my eyes at Cora when she spotted me, and she held her hands up in a defensive gesture.

‘I would like the record to show,’ she said when I came to a stop alongside them both, ‘this was absolutely not my idea and I’m simply here in a supporting role.’

‘Who are you supporting?’ I hugged her. ‘Me, or this crazy one?’

Molly hadn’t even turned to greet me. Her hand was pressed palm flat to the window while she peered into the shop like a street urchin stripped from a Dickens novel.

‘They’re so beautiful, Edi, I just …’ Molly sighed, and turned away from the mannequins.

‘I’m not dress shopping until—’