Felix pushes away from the fridge and moves towards his wife, one hand resting casually on the back of her stool. It’s the first time I’ve seen them interact as if they’re a couple. ‘We can’t sell you the house,’ he says.

My stomach plunges. If the sale falls through now, we won’t suffer financially, beyond the money we’ve laid out for the survey, but emotionally it’s a different story. In my head, I’ve already moved into the Glass House. Even the kids have finally been getting excited about their new bedrooms. The movers are booked. I’ve arranged to have our electricity and gas supply terminated. I’ve ordered a new sofa that’s far too large for our current house, but’ll go perfectly here.

I need this move. Peter needs this move.

‘We wouldn’t do this to you if we had a choice, Millie,’ Stacey says. ‘Hopefully it’ll just mean a bit of a delay while Felix sorts everything out—’

‘How long of a delay?’

‘I don’t want to get your hopes up,’ Stacey says.

‘If Felix has lost his job, surely selling the house would be—’

‘I’m a director,’ Felix says again. ‘My assets are up for grabs.’

‘It’s the company that’s going bust, not you,’ I snap. ‘Your home should be legally protected from creditors.’

‘Not necessarily,’ Felix says.

‘What does that mean?’

Stacey looks nervously at him, and then back at me. ‘It means they can come after your personal assets if they can prove wrongful trading,’ she says. ‘I’m sure it’ll all be fine in the end, because obviously Felix hasn’t done anything wrong,’ she adds hastily. ‘Obviously. But his lawyer says it’s a lot harder to make someone homeless than it is to seize a pile of cash sitting in a bank account. He says we shouldn’t sell the house till this is all sorted out.’

‘You could transfer it into Stacey’s sole name,’ I tell Felix. ‘Your creditors couldn’t come after the money then.’

‘It’d still be a marital asset,’ Stacey says.

Felix gives me a cold stare. I imagine slicing neatly around his eyeballs with my scalpel and pocketing them, like marbles.

As if conjured by my ill-wishing, a sudden gush of blood bursts from Felix’s nose. He tilts his head back and gropes around for something to staunch it as he pinches the bridge of his nose. A light spray of blood spatters the counter and my running shoes.

‘It’s the stress,’ Stacey says, her tone oddly flat. ‘He often gets nosebleeds.’

There’s a tea-towel on the kitchen counter in front of me and I hand it to him.