I didn’t want to be in Alexander’s stupid house. I wondered what my having paid rent meant legally – if I could get that money back. It had to be nearly twenty grand! I wanted to cut every single last tie I had to him as quickly as possible, so that I could move on as happily as I had been doing when we were away. I resented being dragged back into the feelings I thought I’d gotten rid of, and the more I thought about it the more outrageous it was to me that if Alexander had to show up, he’d done so at two o’clock in the morning in the rain. Typical Alexander – it was a time and place that suited him.

Don’t text me again, I added. I’d prefer the paper trail of email, if we’re going to start talking about lawyers.

‘So that’s that,’ I said to Jo over homemade crumpets and jam in her living room. ‘I’m officially on the countdown to find somewhere new to live. Which I am crapping myself about, now. I’d been looking for places, but not really, you know? I was burying my head in the sand a bit.’

‘Well, it’s not fair that you have to find the mental bandwidth for a new house on top of everything else, is it?’ She knelt down on a pillow by her coffee table, using a little wooden spoon to smother her crumpet with her mother’s fig jam before settling it down in its own little wooden spoon holder, shaped like a trough. ‘And he’ll be lucky to find a buyer within a month, if that’s what he’s assuming. He doesn’t have to be such an arse about it. All things considered.’

I chuckled, helping myself to more jam too. ‘It’s helpful, I suppose. Speeds the job up. All aboard the Change Train.’

‘In for a penny, in for a pound?’ Jo said.

‘Something like that, yeah,’ I replied. ‘Everything I thought I wanted has crumbled, so now I have to start from scratch. Although I suppose I’m trying to look at it more as an opportunity, rather than an obligation.’

Jo considered what I’d said as she licked crumbs from her fingers. ‘You seem really well,’ she noted. ‘That trip really did you the world of good. I’m happy for you. And you know, I think a lot of people would secretly like to have a do-over.’

‘Do you think?’ I asked.

‘Yeah. I’m not saying I’d start again, but the idea that after a rough draft I could live life for real is quite seductive, to be honest.’

Relief flooded my body. I hadn’t realized how much I’d been needing to hear somebody say that – to tell me it wasn’t my fault, how everything had blown up.