You’re so disgusting you couldn’t make him stay.

He never loved you.

You tricked him into being with you and he finally found you out.

My inner voice was loud and clear about who I was and what I was worth.

‘Frou, don’t cry,’ Freddie said, and I wished I could stop. ‘You’re the adult I want to be when I’m grown up,’ she declared, her tiny body a thin sheet of insulation against my side. My eyes were a silent Niagara Falls. ‘You’re the best, best, best.’

‘You’re the best, best, best,’ I said, strangled by the tears.

Adzo said, ‘Actually guys, I think I’m the best, best, best?’

I let out a snotty laugh.

‘You’re nine and three-quarters best,’ Freddie avowed. ‘But my big sister wins because those are the rules.’

Adzo considered it. ‘I think those are the rules, yes,’ she mused. ‘I’ve never settled before in my life, but I can settle for nine and three-quarters best.’

We sat together, hugging.

‘I don’t understand how anything will feel normal again,’ I said. ‘I’m so embarrassed. I can’t believe he did this to me.’

‘He did it to all of us,’ Adzo said. ‘We all believed in him. In the pair of you. He was part of your life, of your family.’

Freddie loosened her grip. ‘But not anymore,’ she said. ‘I hate him.’

‘You don’t have to hate him, Frou. That’s okay.’

‘I do,’ she insisted.

‘I do too,’ Adzo agreed.

I hated him as well. I hated him, yet still loved him more than I’d ever loved anybody. Where was he? What the hell had happened to him?

‘I talked to Chen this morning about you coming back to work,’ Adzo said. ‘Just so you know …’

I didn’t say anything. I’d have to walk back into that building with every single person knowing what happened to me. It was going to be horrific.

‘There’s a letter in my bag for you. I think Chen might be worried that you’re going to go nuts and burn your life to the ground and leave the company to live in a tent in the fields of Myanmar. She said that’s what she’d do if she was you, but she can’t afford to lose you.’

I still didn’t say anything. Burning my life to the ground sounded seductive, actually – especially if it meant never having to be the subject of gossip and speculation in the staff kitchen, people wondering out loud why I couldn’t keep a man. Where exactly was Myanmar?