‘Oh my God, Emily! Are you OK? What the hell is going on?’ Sadie peers past me into the hallway. ‘You terrified me!’

‘Sadie, I’m so sorry. I was in the shower, and I thought I heard something, like the sound of a door clicking shut… I thought someone was in the house.’ An ugly heat starts to spread across my chest and up my neck, and I pull my robe tightly closed at the top. ‘You’d better come in.’

‘It was probably your cleaner woman… what’s her name?’ Amanda appears behind Sadie, immaculate in very expensive loungewear. ‘I thought I saw someone walk out of your drive as I turned into the road.’

‘Yes, that’s probably it,’ Sadie says, but her brows tug together in a deep V of concern, and I wish I hadn’t told her about Harry. ‘Amanda was just walking up the driveway when I arrived.’

I stand to one side to let both women in, feeling underdressed and smarting with embarrassment. ‘Yes. It probably was just Anya, now that I think about it. I don’t know why I overreacted so badly. Look, let yourselves through into the kitchen and I’ll go and get dressed. Won’t be a moment.’

Sadie and Amanda head into the kitchen and I scurry upstairs, feeling like a stranger in my own home. I shrug off the robe, grateful for the cool air on my hot skin before reaching for a pair of leggings and a soft, grey cashmere jumper – another gift from Rupert, I never would have been able to afford it myself – and as I turn to leave the bedroom, something catches my eye on the bedside table. Frowning, I scoop it up, turning it over in my hands, its weight a small pebble in my palm. A lipstick. The ruffled gold casing of a Charlotte Tilbury lipstick, so familiar that at first, I think it must be mine, but when I open it it’s not my usual nude pink, but the distinctive orangey-red colour that I’ve only ever seen one woman wearing: Caro, in the photographs dotted across Sadie’s piano, the red her signature shade. With a shiver, I ram the lid back on and shove it into the bathroom bin.

‘So, what will you do with yourself now you’re no longer a working woman? I mean, you have a cleaner now, so it’s not like you still have your old job,’ Sadie asks with a raised eyebrow, as she sips at a glass of wine, pushing her salad around her plate. I’ve yet to see Sadie eat anything of real substance in all the time I’ve known her, and I feel a sharp pang as I think of Mags, stuffing in macaroni cheese as she watches Masterchef on the battered old sofa in the flat.