She reached for her laptop, opened it and pulled up the wedding list. She stared at it. She couldn’t just send a joint email to everyone, because then she would be telling Nat’s relatives and friends as well as her own, so laboriously she entered the addresses of everyone who she thought closest to her. She grimaced at the division into “his” and “hers.” There were several people who belonged to them both, and these she added to her own list. She blind-copied Nat into the message, so that he would know who she had told.

Dear each and all. Some of you have probably already heard by now, but I’m afraid the wedding’s off!

She chewed the side of her finger, then deleted the exclamation mark. It was too perky. Then she deleted the whole thing, and began again.

Dearest everyone. I’m so sorry to be doing this in a group email, but I wanted to tell you all at once, and I will contact you properly soon. Nat and I have broken up. I’ve moved out. Obviously this means there won’t be a wedding. There won’t be lots of things. So I’m partly writing to tell you the party’s off, no dancing in the barn, and partly to say I love you all.

Would that do? Was it too emotional? Not solemn or formal enough? Her finger hovered over the delete cursor, but then she thought, sod it, and pressed “send.” There was a whoosh and it was gone. Jude imagined her friends hearing a ping, taking out their phones, reading it, calling each other . . .

She had left her parents off the email though. She hadn’t been in touch with them over the past terrible days because even the thought of trying to explain what had happened was unbearable. She needed to call them. She needed to call them right now before someone else did, because surely they would find out any moment. She was lucky they hadn’t already. She needed to go and see them and tell them face-to-face. She had nowhere else to be, and the neighbor could feed Simon’s cat. She picked up her mobile and as she did so, it rang, startling her. She looked at it and was even more startled.

“Hi, Mum,” she said. “I was literally picking up my phone to call you.”

As soon as her mother asked how she was, it took an effort to stop herself from crying.

“There’s something I urgently need to talk to you about,” she said. “I should have called before.”

“As it happens, Judith”—her mother and father were the only people who ever called her Judith—“I’m not just calling to chat myself.”

Jude felt a wave of apprehension. She already knows, she told herself. I left it too late.

“What is it?”

“We’ve had a slightly odd message. It’s about you. For you, actually.”