I laughed – from nerves; from amusement; from wanting to fill the quiet. ‘Take care now.’

‘Text me some time if you’d like? Not in four days, though. I can’t wait that long.’

‘You’ll be first on my list after I’ve told my friends that I wasn’t murdered.’

Fred laughed and turned away, then, and quickened her pace along the walk back towards the main city streets. I wondered whether she’d be late for work, but she didn’t strike me as the sort of woman to worry about it. I pushed into my building and ran up the stairs like a teenager on a cross-country course. By the time my key was clunking in the front door lock, I’d already pulled up a fresh message to Faith and Lily: Home safe. She said NEXT TIME. xxx

Chapter 23

Rowan didn’t ask about the date. But he did send flowers, and suggest a cinema night, and offer to cook dinner – ‘You come to me, let me spoil you’ – in the days after I’d seen Fred. She and I were texting every day and it felt disloyal – but there was an unceasing sting of excitement in it all as well. I decided, then, that when I went to Rowan’s for dinner I would ask the unthinkable questions: What are we doing, and how long is it really going to last? I appreciated his new efforts, but I was less appreciative of the fact that he was only making them because he thought I was out there, dating – in short, doing exactly what he was doing (with a woman who I knew would turn his head, which made it all the worse, or better, or both).

After our cinema date he walked me home just like Fred had, except he’d held my hand and kissed me hard and asked whether he could come up. My phone had vibrated with three new messages in my back pocket, though, and they probably weren’t from the girls. ‘I’ve got an early start,’ I’d said. But we made plans to have dinner the following Monday. And that’s when I’ll talk to him, I thought. That’s when we’ll work this all out …

*

The city was always quiet on a Monday. So, instead of ordering an Uber, I walked the twenty-minute stretch from my front door to Rowan’s. The boys would probably be out, I thought, given this invitation. We’d have the place to ourselves to talk and maybe – just maybe – I’d want to stay over.