The moment we’d got engaged flashed into my mind. He’d asked on Christmas morning, right when we woke up, the box having appeared on my bedside table at some point in the night.

‘What do you reckon?’ he’d asked, smirking, his lean naked torso stretched out as he lay on his side. All I’d done in reply was scream, slipping the ring immediately onto my finger, forgetting that was something he was supposed to do for me. I’d never thought it was possible to want to faint from happiness until that point, but wearing it made me more delighted, more ecstatic, more everything than I’d ever been in my life. That ring cemented my future.

‘I’m guessing that’s a yes?’ he’d said, and I promptly burst into tears, nodding and making so much noise that his mum had knocked on the bedroom door of the shared holiday cottage we were in to see if everything was all right.

Happy unlocked her iPhone and pulled up a text thread. My hand was shaking as I took it, my mouth as dry as gin. I focused.

Happy, you’ve been amazing in sorting out today but I’m not coming. I can’t do it. Please tell Annie I’m sorry. I’ll be sure to settle your invoice in full by the end of next week. Thanks for everything. I trust you can handle the guests. Alexander.

People insist that they feel like they’ve been slapped when they find out something shocking and it’s such an overused, clichéd saying. But as I read the text again, and a third time, a fourth – desperate to find the hidden meaning in it, the bit Happy had misinterpreted or got wrong – I was clammy and bilious. I thought of Alexander’s grinning, handsome features. How could he do this to me? What the hell had happened since I’d seen him yesterday afternoon? Was there somebody else? Was it a joke? My brain couldn’t do the complicated maths to understand it. The text was so brief. I read it again: I was an afterthought, my name appearing in between a compliment and a fiscal promise to a woman we’d known eight months. Alexander had known me since uni. None of this made any sense.

My eyes filled and a tear fell to my hand. Just one. Not a steady stream of them, no big wailing or crying or sobbing. I absent-mindedly passed my flowers to Freddie and then, swallowing hard, handed the phone back to Happy. With both trembling hands free I could press my fingertips under my eyes, forcing myself to think.

How do I fix this?