‘Nick’s out at work all day, and I’m alone in the cottage. It’s just so quiet. I suppose you get used to the traffic and foxes and drunks shouting outside your window.’

‘You want that, you come to mine any night of the week,’ she said, rolling her eyes, though I knew she loved her tiny flat in Angel, so small she’d had to have the sofa custom-made.

‘God, they’re slow here,’ I said, as she checked her phone again. ‘Sorry. I should have picked somewhere else.’

‘It’s fine. But tell me, are things alright with Nick?’

I shrugged. ‘He works a lot. I have to ask him for money, and he expects me to cook and clean and all that, for when he comes home.’

Her brow furrowed. ‘God, really? That’s a bit retro, isn’t it?’

‘I suppose when I’m at home all day . . . He used to cook a lot, in London.’ Sometimes I felt like we’d been totally different people here. Like the Nick and Suzi who lived in the countryside were clones of us, with other personalities. Which was the real version?

The food came, Claudia’s tiny, artful salad, my steaming bowl of pasta. She ate three bites then picked up her phone again. ‘God, things are just mad. The pre-Christmas rush, you know. I’m sorry, darling. Why don’t you ring me one night, we’ll chat properly?’

With Nick listening to my every word.

‘Sure. I’m sorry, I’m fine really. Just hormonal, like I said. And kind of lonely.’

‘That’s to be expected, with such a big move. Your life has changed, Suze! That always feels weird.’

‘Yes. You’re right.’

For the rest of our brief lunch, I asked questions about her love life – hot and heavy with some guy from Tinder who didn’t even have a bedroom, but slept under the stairs in a shared house; her job – ‘Salma’s breathing down my neck about the hot spring skirt length, and I am so bricking it I called A line instead of mini’; and her social life – Zumba, circus skills, gin tasting. I felt about a hundred years old. She left not long after, dropping a kiss that barely grazed my skin. I’d offered to pay, since she was in a hurry. ‘Thanks, babe. I’ll get the next one, yeah?’

I didn’t think there would be a next one. And Nick would see the charge on the debit card and ask why it was so high, why I was treating Claudia when she had a job and I didn’t. He’d ask what we ate. If we ordered wine. I was exhausted just thinking about it.