It took eight long years for his big break to finally come. A record deal. With a major label. A song he’d written about me called ‘When She Sleeps’ would be the first single. It felt like finally – finally – all that pain, all that sacrifice, had been worth it. Finally things might get better. Then one evening, about a week later, I got home from work, poured myself a gin and tonic, plonked myself down on the mauve leather sofa I’d paid for and Harrison sat down next to me. He took my hands in his. His eyes began to water. And my heart began to pound: he’d always been anti-marriage, said he didn’t believe in it, but this was it, he was going to propose. Everything was finally working out.

His exact words were: ‘Harper, you know what John Lennon said about how life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans? Well, that’s what happened to me, baby. You were my plan. She just happened. Don’t be angry.’

But I was angry.

And not just because he was leaving me for Melody, his keyboardist. I’d given up on my own dreams in favour of his, I’d lost eight years of my life – that’s 70,128 hours, I checked – and here I was with no degree, no writing career, a credit card debt (independent tours are expensive, you know), a job in an office that I hated, and no idea who the hell I was anymore.

It took a long time for me to realise that was the day I was born.

‘Where did you meet him?’ I ask Camilla, scanning the headlines of the newspapers laid out in front of me: last night the Paris police shot dead a man in a park after a stabbing rampage, the mayor is coming under scrutiny for something I can’t quite understand, and Le Monde’s headline translates as ‘No Justice for Matilde Beaumont?’ She’s been in the papers a lot over the last couple of weeks, so her picture looks almost familiar now as it smiles back at me: young, blonde, pretty. She could have been cast as Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks. And as I scan her features I can’t help but wonder how it happened. How does a normal girl like her end up on the front page of the newspaper?

‘In the elevator at work,’ Camilla says, breaking my chain of thought.

‘Well, what’s his name? Send me his Instagram profile,’ I say, still staring at Matilde’s picture. ‘I’ll vet him for you.’

‘Oh I didn’t actually talk to him,’ she says. ‘But he looks just like the sketch.’

Six months ago, Camilla paid some guy on Etsy to draw a picture of her ‘soulmate’. She provided her full name, her date of birth and her address. She says he needed that information to tap into her aura and she has been convinced ever since that she can use that sketch to find her other half. I, on the other hand, have been convinced that it’s some sort of elaborate identity theft scam. The jury is still out as to which of us is correct, but that right there tells you everything you need to know about us, our respective life philosophies and the vital balancing role we play in each other’s lives.