In Sletts, Polly was packing. She was pleased to be in the bedroom away from Ian, who had already started drinking again. She supposed she should be tolerant, because a bereaved husband ought to be allowed to grieve in his own way, but his pent-up fury was becoming unbearable. And she wished that he didn’t drink so heavily. It made him unpredictable and morose.

Her mother had been a Methodist and had disapproved of alcohol altogether. Polly worried occasionally that she was morphing into her mother, becoming middle-aged and anxious before her time. Sometimes Eleanor had teased her for being staid. ‘Pol, just relax, won’t you. You’re still young!’ Polly wondered how she’d cope without Eleanor to make her laugh, to tempt her to try new experiences. Would she turn into everyone’s stereotype of a librarian, dull and officious? Then she thought that she had Marcus to bring adventure into her life, so perhaps there was still hope for her. She’d miss Eleanor’s company, but recently the three friends had become more distant. Perhaps she’d already reached a new phase in her life.

When they were younger they’d been so close. Polly remembered the late-night conversations, the three friends squashed, half-sitting, half-lying, into a single hall-of-residence bed, a duvet tucked around them against the chill Durham night, drinking tea or chocolate or vodka, depending on the occasion. Then it had been a matter of honour that they had no secrets. They’d talked about all their dreams and fears in detail. Exposing their souls and their petty anxieties.

Now she was astonished at how far they’d drifted apart, how little of their personal lives they’d shared recently. Perhaps that had started with the move to London. London had demanded a gloss of sophistication and pretence. With their smarter clothes and their new friends, they’d developed different personas; suddenly they were competent, witty and self-sufficient. But now she thought that Eleanor and Caroline had always been actors, fitting into new situations in order to survive and excel. Perhaps they’d been performing as much in the draughty university bedroom as in the smart wine bars that had become their natural home in the city. It was likely that Polly, for whom the university experience had been a kind of magic, making her feel that she belonged with people of her own age for the first time, had simply been naive.