It had been humiliating, having to text Claire and beg to move into her spare room. Well, it would have been, so Anya had made Georgie do it. It had been four days since D-Day; Anya was dehydrated from crying, and they had exhausted all of their first-choice avenues: namely, hers and Paddy’s university friends. She’d even remembered that Paddy’s colleague’s nan was looking for a lodger at her place in Milngavie, but, sadly, the nan in question had already found a housemate.

Meanwhile, Georgie had been staying over, mainly to ensure that Anya did return to the office and didn’t spend the whole week half-cut and watching old episodes of America’s Next Top Model. ‘I could ask one of my friends?’ Georgie had said, spooning spinach on to Anya’s plate. Georgie had also taken over feeding duties.

‘I’m not moving in with one of my little sister’s friends,’ Anya had mumbled from inside the hoodie that was beginning to feel like a second skin. She’d been to work but had left early, claiming a migraine. ‘That would be tragic. They must all remember me from school as your really cool, older sister.’ Georgie’s face remained impassive. ‘I just can’t turn up on their doorstep with boxes of my stuff spinning a tragic tale about Connor. Also, don’t they all live in shit student accommodation?’

‘Anya, I’m twenty-eight. So are most of my pals.’

‘Well. Anyway. I don’t really like many of your friends, no offence.’ Anya was pulling on the drawstring of the hoodie. One end was too short now. ‘Look can you just text Claire, OK?’

Georgie had always got on much better with Cold Claire, who must also be around twenty-eight, although she already, gallingly, owned a fairly large Victorian terraced house in the West End, on account of her job as a solicitor at a city firm located just off West Nile Street. She was also already engaged to Richard, who had a funereal bearing, a receding hairline and a poor grasp of the codes of rudimentary human connection.