‘Why don’t you go up there?’ I suggested. ‘You could watch one of the matches? Take some pom-poms for the touch line?’

‘Oh, I offered to go up, but he said there wasn’t much point as I won’t know anyone and it’s all very “teamie”. You know, all that male bonding after. He doesn’t want me to feel left out.’

Soon, even the messages started to dwindle. As the term continued, Grace’s phone began to sit next to her as we lounged on my bed in the evenings, and the TV was silenced each time a message pinged.

‘It’s just you never seem to be around anymore.’ Hats off to her, Grace tried not to whine on the phone. ‘You tell me when’s a good time to call… oh… right. Well, till then.’

She chucked her phone down. ‘His course is really full-on,’ she said. ‘It’s good he’s throwing himself into it.’

‘Medicine’s not such a walk in the park, either,’ I said, but she immersed us back in Glee and that was that until he failed to turn up for a weekend.

She’d gone to Euston to meet the train he said he’d be on. I could picture her waiting at the barrier as the passengers streamed through, bobbing her head this way and that to see through the throng; straining to glimpse her beloved, who absolutely must have been in the last carriage because almost everyone was off and… oh, I could picture the moment she realized there were no more people coming. The moment she turned, confused, searching the concourse in case she’d somehow missed him. I could see her pulling her phone out of her bag and dialling his number, pressing it to her ear, her head tilted and her index finger blocking the noise of the station out of the other ear as she listened to the tinny ring.

He didn’t pick up. Just sent a message saying sorry, he missed the train and he’d see her next week. I found all this out only later because, in a very out-of-character act – and without the massage oils, mini scented candles and VS undies she usually had on hand when she was visiting Alex – Grace actually jumped on the next train to Manchester.

When she got back, she entered my room looking unusually fragile – hollow – as if the essence of her had been snuffed out. Her precious wedding folder was hugged to her chest.

‘It’s Alex.’ She barely got the words out before her face collapsed and she threw herself onto my bed, clutching the folder as if it were a life jacket in the middle of the ocean. I sat next to her and rubbed her back and passed her tissues while she sobbed and then, when she could finally speak, she started to explain, between hiccups, a story even I hadn’t seen coming.