The next day, sleep-deprivation had done nothing to crush her energy levels. On the contrary, she had been a dervish of efficiency, spinning through chores and work, jotting a clear to-do list in Viv’s journal and ticking each item off with a thick black marker. A young man called Ed, fresh out of a garden design course and putting cards in people’s letterboxes, had agreed to return with a nifty machine for munching cuttings and an estimate for digging over and planting grass seed. By Monday night, five thousand words of lively, appealing, jargon-free copy for the Women’s Wellbeing launch magazine had been re-edited and despatched. Finding a little time on her hands, Esther had even found herself sitting down at the kitchen table and blowing the dust off the bits of the broken pot, left for so long on the window sill, and doing her best with superglue. She and Lucas were broken, but that didn’t mean the little vase didn’t deserve the chance of a longer life. A somewhat lumpen, jagged jigsaw of an object emerged, but useful nonetheless for things like paper clips and stray buttons, Esther reasoned, setting it on the dresser.

‘Shona?’

‘Esther, oh my God, I am the lousiest friend, how the hell are you?’

‘Not too bad. I’m in the car – plugged in – on the way to see Lily. How are things?’

‘Oh, they’re insanely hectic – for Carole too – ridiculous case-loads… sorry we couldn’t say yes to your Halloween thing…’

‘It wasn’t a thing, just…’

‘Esther, I feel so bad I haven’t been in touch. How are you really? Hang on, let me close my door and clear the decks a little.’

‘Actually, I am good…’ Esther stopped as Shona did some noisy moving around, taking a moment to consider the default readiness to offer sympathy. Even with their recent on-off communications, that was how it had always been: Shona, positive and enamoured of Carole, and her, full of self-put-down and negativity, usually about Lucas. To the point where Esther had wondered sometimes how much simpler and better life might be if she, too, could find it in herself to settle with a lovely female partner instead of a selfish, buttoned-up male.

‘So, tell me, dearest Esther, how you are managing. I’ve got to jump on a call, but not for at least ten minutes…’