A moment of confusion, some misfiring synapses, and then I remember: Camilla. I never knew I could be so grateful for an app like Find My Friends until I saw her there last night, on the street outside, with her little suitcase. I pull off my eye mask – it’s bright, too bright for autumn – and roll over, pull out the one earplug still lodged in my ear and reach for my phone.

It’s just after 8.30 am.

And I should just let it go, but I can’t help it. I scroll through to The Paris Observer website and there, on the landing page, is Stan’s article. Disappointment ripples through me.

I hate him.

I sit up. My feet hit the floorboards. I take a deep breath and then I drag my heavy limbs through to the kitchen. Camilla is by the sink, pouring coffee from a cafetière and biting into an apple.

‘Morning,’ she says. ‘Want some?’

‘Yeah, thanks,’ I say. And then I wander over to the sofa bed we set up for her and sit down, hugging my knees to my chest.

She looks at me with narrowed eyes.

‘You haven’t been looking at his story, have you?’ she asks. We agreed last night over a bottle of wine that I wouldn’t look at Stan’s piece. We’d pretend it never happened. But then, I agree to lots of stupid things when tipsy.

That was just before she told me all about Mr Fourteenth Floor and her screening call with Vogue, and about how everything was falling into place because her sun was conjunct something or other. I didn’t argue that point like I normally would, didn’t point out that it wasn’t the sun who sent Vogue her resume. It was just so great to have her here.

‘Maybe,’ I say.

‘Well, don’t.’ She brings my coffee over to me. ‘Anyway, I have something that will cheer you up.’

I take a sip and watch as she reaches into her open suitcase and pulls out a pair of fluffy handcuffs, throwing them at me. They land on my lap.

I start to laugh. ‘You found them?’ I say, picking them up.

I stayed with Camilla for the week before I left for Paris, having given up my room in the flatshare.

‘They were behind the laundry basket. God knows how they got there.’

She takes her coffee and sits down next to me and puts her hand on my arm. ‘It’ll be okay, you know,’ she says.

And usually I’d make some quip about ‘How do you know, is Mercury about to go direct or something?’ But this morning I just smile and nod. Lana gets super sad and so Camilla reaches for her phone and changes it to something upbeat. But as she looks down at the screen her face breaks into a grin.

‘What?’ I ask.

‘Nothing,’ she says, putting down her phone.