But then, the last two days hadn’t brought anything she had liked, so why should this be any different?

Louisa glanced up the road to where she’d seen Oliver parked before. No car. Good. In a swift movement, she entered the driveway and then marched up to the front door. She took a breath, then rang the bell. She wasn’t going to risk going around the back as she usually did, in fear that Tiff would take the opportunity to make a quick getaway. No, this time she wasn’t going to accept a brush-off; she was going to make sure Tiff invited her in.

Louisa pressed herself up against the door, listening for any movement from within.

She hesitated. Tiff might know she was on the doorstep and be keeping quiet, waiting for Louisa to leave. She rang the bell again. The little light blinked to show it was working. Nothing. Louisa backed up, her head tilted upwards, so she could take in the upstairs windows. The curtains in Tiff’s room were closed.

Louisa’s jaw slackened, her body becoming rigid.

Tiff was up in her bedroom with someone.

Walking back to the pram, Louisa pushed it up, positioning it sideways in front of the door. Taking her mobile from the changing bag, Louisa called Tiff’s number. When that went to answerphone, she called the landline. The answer machine kicked in there, too.

Struggling to keep her rising temper under control, Louisa walked around the side of the house.

A voice reached her ears.

Tiff was in the back garden. Louisa knew she couldn’t be speaking on the phone because she’d just called both numbers and neither had been engaged. With her back flat to the wall, she crept further to the rear of the house.

‘I’ve literally no idea. She’s been acting very strangely since having Noah. She has taken baby brain to a whole new level. It’s difficult to trust anything she says or does.’ Tiff’s laughter floated in the air, carried along on the breeze around the corner, delivering it to Louisa in the form of a punch to the stomach.

The realisation struck her suddenly: it was possible Tiff always spoke about Louisa in that way. She wouldn’t know seeing as she didn’t socialise with the same groups of people. With any people. Tears burned her eyes. She was back at school – the unpopular spotty teenager who everyone talked about rather than talked to – hiding in the toilet block at break times, listening to the sniggering popular girls as they talked shit about her. It wasn’t something she expected to be experiencing at forty.