‘So,’ he started, ‘how are we feeling about a series? Or, if you’re not in the mood for anything new, we can flit back through our watched list and … Is everything okay?’

I looked up. ‘Course, why do you ask?’

‘You’ve been on and off that thing all night. But you look all serious.’ I’m concentrating, I thought, but decided it was something I was best off not admitting to. ‘Are the girls okay?’

I shot him a look. ‘I think so?’

‘I assumed …’ He nodded at the phone. ‘Group chat?’

‘Oh.’ Before they’d left me, days ago, Faith and Lily had asked again whether I’d tell Rowan; I’d asked them in return whether they thought I should. Dating another woman felt a little like colouring outside the lines of our agreement. Even though nothing had been set down in the ground rules – which were by then tacked to my fridge with a photograph magnet of a more monogamous couple than we could claim to be now – to say whether we could or couldn’t date people of the same sex.

‘Do you think he’ll be funny about it?’ I’d asked them both.

Lily’s lips had bunched up to one side as she’d thought it over. ‘He might be into it.’

Faith was less convinced. ‘A bloke like Rowan? Edi, beaut, don’t think me rude, but he probably doesn’t even think you’re dating anyone, never mind dating a woman. Blokes like him—’ she kept phrasing it that way, as though Rowan was of-a-type ‘—they make these suggestions with themselves in mind and I’m telling you now that it won’t cross his mind that you’ll do better at this than him.’

‘It isn’t a competition,’ I’d told her and she laughed, but then Lily had weighed in.

‘When it comes to men and women, babes, it’s always a competition.’

‘It actually isn’t the group chat,’ I answered eventually, even though my internal narrator was screaming protests against the admission. ‘I’m just making some plans for the weekend.’

‘Fair enough.’ He turned back to the television. ‘Hot date?’

If someone asked what was wrong with his question, I couldn’t have explained it in a word. But it was, I thought, fractured with the beginnings of a laugh. He didn’t quite smirk. The question was thrown out there with such disinterest, though, that it occurred to me Rowan – with his perfect looks and his girls lined up around the block – honestly thought he knew what my answer would be. Not for the first time, then, it crossed my mind whether Faith was right – whether he was enjoying this partly, largely even, because he thought I wasn’t doing the same as him. And in the seconds after he’d asked, while something like rage started to simmer in my stomach, I felt spite rise up like a kind of bile.