‘Wow. What was she doing here?’ Rupert asks, as I stand shell-shocked in the hallway, the parcel still in my hand.

‘I don’t really know.’ I glance down at the package, wrapped neatly in green paper, my name written across it in swirly gold pen. ‘She said she came to deliver a card that had been sent to the flat in my name. I saw her in town a while ago and she mentioned it, but I just ignored it. Didn’t think it was important.’

‘How did she know to come here?’ Rupert turns to look at me, a frown on his face.

‘I don’t know, I never told her.’ I feel as though I have to make Rupert aware that none of this is down to me. ‘She said we weren’t that difficult to find.’ I stop short of mentioning Caro and the society pages.

‘Well, probably best if she doesn’t come here again, eh?’ Rupert brushes past me towards the staircase, dropping a kiss on my head as he passes by. ‘Every time you see her, she seems to upset you, Em. I did tell you it’s best to stay away from her.’

I say nothing, waiting for him to go upstairs before I switch my attention back to the parcel. I turn it over in my hands, a chilly hand stroking my spine. Whatever it is, whoever it’s from, I don’t want it. I should have asked Mags if she saw who had left it and I wish for a brief second that I hadn’t opened the door at all. Another part of me wishes, just for a moment, that I had invited her in for a cup of tea, before I remember how suffocating she can be, how clingy, and how much easier life is without her in it. I turn on my heel and head into the kitchen, where I stuff the parcel behind the bin, and pour myself a fresh glass of wine, trying to shake the image of Mags on the doorstep from my mind.

Chapter Eighteen