Richard was from Edinburgh, which she’d always held against him, and Anya had to concede she hadn’t necessarily made the best first impression. On their first encounter, a Sunday lunch round Auntie Sal’s, he had spent rather a lot of time lecturing her mother about the importance of changing her passwords regularly (he worked in IT). Anya had not been charmed, though she acknowledged it was her fault that Richard had definitely overheard her commiserating with her mum about ‘being stuck with that dickhead all afternoon’.

‘I was just showing Anya the room.’ Claire extended a cheek to Richard, who gave it a cold, dutiful peck. Anya assumed they had silent, clinical sex. She felt relieved, at least this meant she wouldn’t hear it from her new bedroom.

‘Ah, yes.’

‘Thanks so much for having me,’ she mumbled.

‘Well. It wasn’t my idea.’

‘Right,’ Anya replied.

Claire walked down the hallway, towards the front door with its stained-glass panel.

‘Let me know when you’ll be coming, will you?’ She opened the door. ‘I’ll have to get you a key cut.’ She sighed. And then Anya was on the doorstep, the front door shut abruptly behind her. Certain they were watching her through the window, Anya walked to the end of the path and took a few confident strides right, until she was in front of the neighbouring house, at which point, she pulled her phone out, and stopped dead. Two WhatsApps and her breath caught, but they were only Georgie and Paddy, obviously. She and Connor had established a rule that there would be no contact for two weeks, in theory to protect them both, but she had a hollow, dispirited feeling that it was simply to protect him from having to read her dejected messages.

She opened Georgie’s first.

How did it go with Claire?

Please say you were nice

Automatically, Anya started typing a furious response and then, blinking at it – spatters of drizzle hitting the screen – she deleted it, and instead read Paddy’s message.

How was the house of horrors

When do you move in

Am in Oran Mor with Ash and Mark if you need a drink

She replied.

I need a drink

Coming now

She caught her senses and started up the street, with a single backwards glance at her new home. Richard was watching her from the first floor window of her bedroom. Even from a distance, she could tell he was glaring at her.