Sara had gone to bed before ten last night. Damien had sat up. Said he had work to do. She had left her phone in the living room, as Damien insisted she do, because staring at the screen would keep her awake.

“I’ve been tired lately,” Sara said. “I’ve not been sleeping. There’s so much going on at the office.”

“It was Damien talking to me last night,” Amanda said. “He was pretending to be you, wasn’t he?”

“I don’t remember,” Sara said. “Like I said, I was tired. I don’t know what I was talking about.”

“You don’t remember,” Amanda said, her fingers tightening on Sara’s hand. “Do you remember asking me all about Geoff? That guy you went out with for a month in first year?”

“No,” Sara said.

“It’s not right,” Amanda said. “It’s not normal. Him going on WhatsApp, pretending to be you. And what else? Twitter? Facebook? Texts? How can I message you and know it’s really you?”

“It’s not like that,” Sara said. “I mean, he has my passwords, but it’s just—”

“Just what? Just nothing. It’s not right. Do you have his passwords?”

When Sara didn’t answer, Amanda grabbed both her hands, squeezed them hard. As Sara dropped her gaze to her lap, Amanda dipped her head, looked up at her. Gave her no room to get away.

“And do you know what that means?” Amanda said. “It means I can’t trust you. As a friend, how can I ever send you a text, a message, a DM, how can I ever do any of that knowing it might not be you who’s going to read it?”

Sara raised her shoulders, dropped them, shook her head.

“I have nothing to hide from Damien,” she said.

“But I do,” Amanda said. “If I tell you something, I’m telling you, not him. Jesus, you’re my friend, Sara. You and me. Not you and me and him. Don’t you understand that? And not just me. Tanya and Chloe as well. Tanya hasn’t seen you since the wedding. Christ, you live twenty minutes apart. You haven’t seen her in more than eighteen months, doesn’t that tell you something?”

Damien had never liked Tanya. He said she talked too much, laughed too hard. And she was a slut, he said, more men in her life than any woman should have. He didn’t want Sara to be around her and all those hungry, reaching, feeling men.

“Friends drift apart,” Sara said. “It happens.”

“We’re not drifting away,” Amanda said. “We’re being pushed away. Surely you can see that? He’s isolating you.”

“No.”

“Apart from work, do you ever go out without him?”

“Of course I do.”

“Where?”

“Places, I don’t know, shops and—”

“Where?”

“Don’t badger me like that, it’s not fair.”