The reasons for doubting him piled on, making it impossible to pick just one thing to be angry about. But I wasn’t an angry person – and I’d never been the angry girlfriend before. I thought back to Skye and the hurt that had spilled out from that, but had it been anger? Because it certainly didn’t feel like whatever had elbowed between us now.

‘I need some time,’ I said, looking down the road and deliberately away from him. There was a riptide of nerves and bad feeling in my belly. ‘Not six months’ time, but time.’ The girls would be proud of the dig.

‘To think about whether you want this to stop?’ he pushed.

But I did look at him, then, because part of me needed to see his reaction when I said, ‘Yes. And then to think about what I mean by “this”.’ In a snap he opened his mouth to answer, but I knew him well enough to know that nothing good would come from a kneejerk response. ‘Don’t. You asked me what I needed and I’ve told you. I can get home from here, thanks.’ I leaned forward and kissed his cheek. ‘Tell the boys I said hello.’

I turned and hurried and hoped he wouldn’t catch up with me. When I rounded the first corner onto a fresh street, I realised he wasn’t coming – and I didn’t even know how I felt about that. What I did know, though, was that this wasn’t Skye take two. I was allowed to call the girls; I was allowed to tell them everything. ‘It’s my fucking story, after all,’ I said to no one as I fumbled to free my mobile from my coat pocket. Before I’d even got the screen unlocked, though, an incoming call flashed up: Betty.

‘Bet, am I glad that you—’

‘Women, assemble,’ she interrupted me. I could hear chatter in the background. ‘Patrick and Molly have gone south, and Thursday is the new Friday anyway. You in?’

But work … was my first thought.

But a hangover is a sickness … was my second.

‘I’m in.’

Chapter 25