We walked in silence for a minute or two and I wondered if seeing the old place – smelling the old smell – had brought the memories flooding back to Grace as it had to me. We reached the Tube station and my steps slowed and stopped. I felt short-changed, the visit an anti-climax.

‘Now what?’ I said, my mouth full of words left unsaid.

‘We could get some lunch?’ Grace suggested with a shrug, so we wandered toward a café and took a table. We ordered, then Grace slumped back in her plastic seat.

‘So what did you think?’

‘It looked different.’

‘Yeah, I thought so, too. It looked so much smaller today. Maybe all the furniture they had in there.’

‘Maybe.’

‘It was a big flat for the two of us. We did well!’

I let it go; the fact that it was ‘my’ flat that she’d gate-crashed; that it was I who’d paid the all the rent on a flat I’d chosen for one.

‘Speaking of flats,’ I said, ‘have you thought any more about looking for your own place?’

‘Not really.’ Grace smiled, the gleaming white of her teeth just showing through her lips. ‘Are you sure your husband doesn’t want to stay in New York a bit longer? Like, six months and really get ahead with his career? I wouldn’t mind! Then it could be just us.’ She gave me a full-beam smile, but I laughed. Not this time. I wasn’t falling for her tricks again.

‘God, no. I want him back as soon as possible.’

She shook her head as if I were a lost cause. ‘Why did you get married, Abs? I don’t understand why women shackle themselves to a man.’

‘Ironic coming from the girl who had the wedding folder. Remember? All the details? The dress, the apple pie, the children? Two girls, wasn’t it?’

She had the decency to laugh. ‘Yeah. That was then. I knew no better.’

We lapsed into silence while the waiter brought my wine. I took a sip and looked at Grace across the table. She was checking her phone, giving little smiles and private laughs at the screen as she did so, and I thought: is that it? Is that all that’s going to be said? I was going to do it. I had to.

‘Happy days,’ I said, even though they weren’t. Not for me, anyway.

‘Yeah.’ Grace didn’t look up.

I took another swig of wine, then dived in.

‘How’s Tom?’ The words exploded out of me, unplanned, then hovered there over the table like blimps as the scar she’d etched onto my heart throbbed. ‘Do you still see him?’

Grace laughed then. ‘Tom?’ She scrunched up her face as if she barely remembered who he was. ‘Oh God. No. We broke up – wow – years ago.’