‘It is not bollocks, it’s the truth. The way you kept on at me, pointing out my idiocy, not letting me go, your lovely status reports, I shall never forget it… helping me towards sense. The couples therapy has been astonishing. I mean, we’ve reached the point where I can even tease Brian about you now…’

‘Oh, God, poor man. Not too much, I hope.’

‘No, not too much,’ she said softly. ‘Hey, and maybe go steady on that stuff,’ she added, glancing at the passenger seat as Esther squirted more homeopathic drops onto her tongue. ‘I think it’s supposed to be three every six hours…’

‘Well, I’ve had loads more than that, and actually, please, can we not talk any more? Because I think I need to just look out of the window or I might be sick.’

‘Such fun times,’ Viv murmured, ‘driving my best friend towards her worst nightmare.’

‘Blame Dylan,’ Esther said grimly, staring through the car window up at the sky, the first convulsions of real terror starting to twist her insides.

When the crane initially came into view only a couple of minutes after they had turned off the motorway, Esther’s first, grateful, thought was that it didn’t look that high. The nearer they got, however, the more it grew. By the time they reached the reception area and car park and the milling clusters of spectators near its base, it had become an Eiffel Tower. Every time her eyes flew skywards, a wave of nausea gushed through her. Someone who had clearly jumped just before Viv parked was now dangling like a pin on a string. Even spotting Lily and Dylan heading their way as they walked across the car park – it was all she could do to smile. Lily arrived first, with Matteo trailing behind, the pregnancy they insisted had been genuinely not realized, rather than lied about, now visible as a distinct bump under her blue hoodie. Behind them, Dylan was hanging on tightly to the girl called Zee, visiting from Australia and supposedly travelling on through Europe, though there had been no sign of it yet. Her son, white-faced and almost mute, looked rather as she felt, Esther was touched to note, when it got to his turn for a hello. In the same instant, Marcus sprang out from behind a van parked alongside the hut of a registration office, clutching a lavish bunch of flowers, which he immediately shoved behind his back, saying they were for afterwards – if she survived.

‘Hey, I thought we agreed you would talk her out of it,’ he scolded Viv, putting his arm around Esther. ‘I know you’ll do fine,’ he whispered, pulling her close, ‘and of course I couldn’t not come.’

‘I’m glad you’re here,’ she admitted in a small voice.