We headed through the side of the park and off to some residential streets that looked vaguely familiar from my days of early morning runs. I hadn’t been out once since we’d got home – I hadn’t had the urge. I hadn’t worked out at all, actually. Unless sex counted, but even that was becoming a distant memory now.

‘I need to talk to Patrick,’ I said, after explaining to her that we’d barely had five texts between us. ‘I’m just trying to be responsible and make sure I’m making my choices for me, finally, but I think I pushed him away. I’m scared! Surely he gets that.’

‘I mean, I have heard rumours of couples directly communicating to each other about their issues,’ Adzo conceded. ‘It’s urban legend, but the notion has been floated.’

That made me laugh in spite of myself. ‘Adzo!’ I mock scolded. ‘Take this seriously! I don’t know how to fight! I’m not used to getting mad!’ It was true: I used to do anything to avoid confrontation. It was really uncomfortable for me to have any ongoing issues with Patrick, but I knew it was a strange kind of progress for me.

Adzo came to a stop. I looked around. We were in the middle of a street of Victorian terraces – the grand, roomy ones with high ceilings that cost a fortune if you own a full one, but most of which had been carved up into flats.

‘Listen,’ she said. ‘I can’t help on the Patrick front.’

I blinked.

‘But like I said … I can help,’ she continued, ‘on the house front.’

She marched through the powder green gate of the end terrace, down the short path littered with pots of green leaves that undoubtedly smelled amazing every spring. She tipped one of the pots closest to the bins up on its side, used her foot to slide out a key, and stood back up holding it aloft saying, ‘Ta-da!’

‘This is the one that’s in my budget?’ I said.

‘Babe,’ she replied. ‘You’re going to love it.’

‘What?! This is too fancy!’

‘Come on,’ she trilled, the key already in the lock and a foot inside the communal hallway.

The walls were chalky white with the kind of paint that’s expensive – I could tell by the way the light was absorbed instead of reflected. I happened to know a lot about paint because of Bri’s kitchen remodel. The carpet was a woven hessian finish, cosy and inviting, and a small table with a mirror above it bore two small piles of post.