Ellen sat up straighter. ‘Gillingham, in Kent?’

‘What? Oh, Gillingham, yeah. In Kent.’

‘That’s where I’m from!’

She reeled. No one was ever from Gillingham – in fact, she hadn’t met anyone from there since she’d left home for university. It was a standard-issue British town, with little to recommend it, as far as Ellen was concerned, other than a high-speed rail link that took you away from the place.

Ben laughed, incredulously. ‘What? Which school did you go to?’

‘Rainham Girls?’

‘Ha. I went to Rainham Boys!’

‘Oh my God.’

Ellen hadn’t spoken to anyone from Rainham Boys since she was eighteen. The school’s name conjured memories of sticky snogs on the dance floor at one of the three Wetherspoons on the High Street. All three had dance floors of varying sizes, and on Saturday nights all the underage pupils from the sixth forms of the three local schools (Rainham Girls, Rainham Boys and the mixed school, St James’s) had tried their luck. First with the intimidatingly wide bouncers who straddled the doors, and then with each other on the dance floors.

‘Wait, so what year did you finish school?’

‘In 2009?’ he replied.

‘Same! We must have been in the same year!’

‘This is a very weird coincidence,’ Alexa said, brightly.

‘OK, so we have definitely been in the same room before.’ Ben was animated now. He shuffled slightly, so he could get a better look at Ellen.

She noticed he had very long eyelashes.

‘We must have been … we must know so many people in common! I’m trying to remember who I knew properly who went to Rainham Girls –’

‘Surely Joanna Jessop,’ Ellen supplied, quickly.

‘Oh my God!’ Ben gazed at her, his face solemn. ‘JJ.’

Ben’s tone communicated, at a stroke, that he too had been following on Facebook the dramatic events of Joanna Jessop’s divorce and return from ‘the brink’. Guilty laughter.

‘She went out with one of my friends for about three months when we were fourteen. I remember going to a gathering at her house and she was wearing a pink feather boa and matching cowboy hat.’

Ellen could see it. In fact, she was fairly sure that JJ had worn a feather boa to their leavers’ dance.

‘Is she the one you always show me on Instagram?’ Alexa asked.

‘Yeah,’ Ellen said, shortly. ‘My mum tells me she’s bought a lovely two-bed near the new station,’ she added, rolling her eyes. ‘I’m sure we’ll see some panoramas on Facebook in no time.’

Ben snorted. ‘Did you know Sarah Bletchley?’

‘God, I have not thought about Sarah Bletchley in years.’