She could hear Thomas smiling down the phone. ‘Well. We can pick this up another time. I can better prepare my argument then. You said you’re off on Monday?’

‘That’s the best day, yeah. I don’t like to ask Manuela to cover for me. It feels like an imposition.’

‘We can talk about that on Monday too. I’ll look forward to it.’

‘Same,’ said Penny, realizing she really meant it.

She suddenly thought of that prick. She’d been furious at him for so long but, almost in an instant, she wasn’t mad anymore. What Charlie said had helped. It’s not that she thought she was going to marry Thomas and live happily ever after – for one thing, she would never marry a man who wore silk Gucci jogging bottoms – but in making a friend from outside the pub, and knowing how happy her team were about the Christmas party, and that she’d see her sister soon – she felt lighter. Not happy, exactly, but like she had everything a bit more under control. She was going to hang out with a cute guy and it’s not like she and that prick had been girlfriend or boyfriend or anything. Maybe she’d overreacted? Or at the very least reacted exactly right and now was simply over it? That could happen, couldn’t it – that’s how anger worked. You could be mad for ages and then one day, the thing you were mad about just doesn’t make you feel mad anymore.

And anyway, it remained exactly as she’d always said: she lived here and he lived there, and he’d probably already be seeing somebody else – maybe the woman he’d been snogging – and so, whatever. If he’d been into Bridges to ask her to get in touch, she’d get in touch. She’d punished him enough. She was moving on. It was time.

She texted him: Long time no speak. And then she put her phone in a drawer.

12

‘I can’t believe you’ve convinced me to do this,’ Penny panted, halfway up a small hill just off the A6 outside of Bakewell.

‘Yes you can,’ Thomas bellowed from up ahead. ‘Of course you can! I’m the man who can!’

Penny stopped walking. ‘I’m the chick who can’t.’

‘No!’ pleaded Thomas. ‘Don’t stop! Just get at least two thirds of the way up, then I have a surprise for you.’

The pair of them were fifteen minutes into a four-hour hike through the Peak District, Thomas’s ‘Favourite Ever Walk.’ He’d told her the day before, as they’d arranged it, ‘It’s the walk I do every time I come back off tour. It tells my brain: okay, work over, relax time now. It’s my reset button.’

‘How many women have you roped into helping you press your reset button?’ Penny had asked provocatively.