“You’re not confident,” said Walden. “You’re smug.” And a little echo in her thoughts, Roz in California in the mid-2000s, You’re so fucking smug, when Saffy hadn’t really realised she was being condescending—even now, couldn’t remember what had actually annoyed Roz so much. Perhaps Mark had never grown out of being twentysomething and superior, sure the world would work for him, sure he would always get what he wanted in the end. Well, why would he need to? The world did, on the whole, work well for a Mark Daubery.

As it worked well for Sapphire Walden: Saffy, who’d left her high school boyfriend to die in horror and faced nothing worse than a stern talking-to afterwards, who’d still got her A-level grades and her Oxford place, who’d made new friends and had new loves and bought herself a little black dress to wear to parties. Ridiculous to dwell on any of it. All done decades ago. She was Dr Walden now. And yes, the world worked for her: she had success, status, a reasonable share of power, and the comfortable bank balance of a professional woman without dependants who didn’t even need to pay a mortgage. She lived in an unfair world where most of the unfairness had worked out in her favour. Looked at that way, she and Mark were two of a kind. So it was no wonder that despite herself, despite knowing exactly what kind of smug bastard he was, despite everything, she rather liked him.

“Shame to waste an atmosphere, you know,” said Mark, nodding out at the Christmas lights, the drifting snow.

“I bet you say that to all the girls,” said Walden.

“Can’t a chap appreciate a romantic night?”

“Are you trying to persuade me that you have hidden depths?”

“Of course I have hidden depths,” said Mark in a hurt way. “I know on the surface I seem like a self-involved arsehole. But under the surface, I’ve got finer feelings—sincerity, romance, a little real loneliness, a passion for magic, the soul of a poet. And then deep down, if you really go digging, all the way down at the bottom of my heart … eventually, you’ll find my true self.” A beat. “And it’s the same selfish arsehole you spotted in the first place.”

Walden started to laugh.

“I’m like a sandwich.”

“At least you’re honest.”

“To you, Sapphire, I wouldn’t dare to lie.”

“Oh, all right,” Sapphire said, which was perhaps not the most romantic way to indicate willingness to be kissed, but Mark chuckled and took her up on it anyway.