She sighed, twirled the phone cord around her finger, studied Max mumbling to himself as he jabbed at his typewriter, trying to conjure the right words. She wondered if Jim did that too. She’d never seen him at work, nor had he her – apart from those early days on their student paper. They each had their own daytime world when they existed outside of coupledom, and she loved that. If she didn’t have her job, what would she have to tell him at the end of each day? She couldn’t imagine hearing about his day at work and only being able to offer up talk of children’s parties and nappies in return. But Maggie was right, this couldn’t go on.

‘I’m not punishing him,’ she’d said to Maggie, repeatedly, after one post-argument night back at her old flat turned into a few days, and then a few weeks.

‘You just need some space, yes, I know.’ Maggie rolled her eyes. ‘Well, you haven’t exactly got it here.’

That was certainly true. Maggie’s bedroom seemed so much smaller and more cluttered than Sylvia had ever noticed when she actually lived in the flat. She’d never quite realised what a hoarder Maggie was. Every surface in her room was covered with trinkets from her travels, stuffed toys, funny postcards sent by friends years ago, pictures in dusty old frames. And then there were the sketches, and paint swatches on paper with scribbled notes next to them – one of these colours for the emperor’s palace walls? Ask John which he prefers – and the cardboard models of sets, evidence of Maggie’s job, of her future, marching on, exactly in the way she’d worked so hard to have it.

As Sylvia lay in the single bed that first morning – ‘You’re pregnant, I can hardly make you sleep on the floor,’ Maggie had said, forming the sofa cushions into a makeshift mattress on the bedroom carpet for herself – she heard Maggie’s new flatmate Rose come out of her old room and head for the shower, and a pang of regret socked her in the stomach like a physical blow. Things were moving on without her, continuing in their intended direction as she moved off on a tangent.

This wasn’t how it was meant to be.

‘Life isn’t a straight line, Syl darling. Haven’t you figured that out by now?’ Maggie had said.

‘I want it to be.’

Maggie laughed. ‘What, and give up spontaneity, the excitement of the unknown? Don’t be silly.’

Sylvia propped herself up on her elbow and looked at her friend. ‘I’ve fought hard to be on this path and I want to stay on it.’