‘Tone, come in.’ Abs pulled him inside, even though it wasn’t his house. ‘Look at us, the old squad back together again.’

Tony looked warily around the reception of Jez’s big house, which had been tastefully designed and decorated at great expense by his wife, Bethany. As far as Abs knew, Tony was still living in that bungalow the size of a shoebox up in Hadleigh. Jez had gone up in the world since Tony had last seen him, on the day they came home from the disastrous holiday in Wales.

‘Are these for me?’ Abs reached for the flowers. ‘Bruv, you didn’t have to.’

‘They’re for Bethany,’ said Tony, in that reedy voice of his.

‘I was joking, fella.’ Abs held out his arms. ‘Come here.’

He didn’t like it when people were unhappy, and he moved in for a hug as if he had missed Tony every single day. The fact that he and Jez had avoided Tony and Deano like the plague for three years was beside the point. He didn’t want any bad blood, definitely not now. But beneath the aftershave, there was a proper pong coming off his former friend, of body odour and Dettol, and he stepped smartly back.

‘You got a nice place here,’ Tony told Jez, but his voice betrayed resentment. ‘You’ve certainly fallen on your feet.’

‘Thanks, Tone,’ said Jez modestly.

Then they heard a clopping sound and looked behind them to see a pair of strappy heels coming down the hardwood stairs into the large reception, revealing a trim woman in an expensive summer dress. Faced with the arrival of Bethany, Tony seemed to become even more diminished. Jez had a nice house and a beautiful wife.

Back when Jez and Bethany first started dating, Abs was one of the biggest stars on the telly. Everyone loved him – everyone. But Bethany had taken an instant dislike to him, an attitude that had only hardened down the years. It was like she had a force field around her that repelled all his charm, and the more he tried to get her to like him, the more she treated him with disdain.

After they came back from the Welsh trip, her dislike of him intensified. It was like she knew something bad had happened. Maybe she sensed a change in Jez, felt his simmering guilt and anxiety, despite the fact that he swore blind to Abs that he’d never tell her what happened: ‘I would never, Abs, it would be the end.’

The way Bethany acted, with airs and graces, you’d think she had been born with a silver spoon in her mouth. But her old man was an old East End geezer who earned all his money selling knock-off motors, and if the rumours were true he had a few unsavoury associates. Her parents, who lived out of town in a massive mansion surrounded by acres of private land, treated their only daughter like a princess, showering her with money and stuff. They had paid for this big town house, for the sports car in the garage, and the many exotic holidays that she and Jez enjoyed every year.