It didn’t take long to find him, and as soon as Janie saw his picture she took a deep breath, sitting back in her chair, her fingers tapping through images, her breath short and ragged.

She pulled her mobile towards her and scrolled through her contacts. She had a sudden urge to call Sophie, although she could never tell her the reason. She could never admit to her best friend that she had been thinking of Miles, that she’d searched for him online, had seen his face.

‘Hey, you,’ her friend answered. ‘How’s things in the deep south?’

Janie laughed, her heart still beating a little too fast. ‘Good. All good,’ she said.

‘How are my god-daughters?’

Janie told her about Ella’s assembly and Lottie’s ballet classes, and Sophie listened with interest about the children she loved. She would never have her own now. By Sophie’s admission, that time had passed, but it didn’t stop Janie thinking she would have made a great mum.

‘Harry?’ she asked.

‘Yep, all good.’

There was a beat of silence before Sophie ventured, ‘Sure?’

Janie laughed. ‘Yes, of course,’ she said. ‘Life’s busy, you know – Harry’s working a lot and I’m on the go …’ Her words fizzled out; there was no convincing Sophie, as much as Janie had always tried, that this was the life she was cut out for. That there wasn’t something missing from what should be an idyllic existence.

Janie would never find her sister probing like this, making sure she was all right. As far as her sister was concerned, there wasn’t anything Janie could possibly have to complain about, when she had a huge house with a pool and, in her own words, a husband who looked like Harry. But then her sister had always been jealous, and Sophie never had been. Not even when their lives couldn’t have been more different.

Their paths had set off in opposing directions the day they left school. Sophie had balanced a string of jobs and was now living in a small flat with a struggling artist for a boyfriend who, at forty, was five years her junior. But Sophie had never envied Janie’s wealth; if anything, she was more concerned that Janie wasn’t someone who wanted to be living off her husband.

‘I know you’re at work, I won’t keep you,’ Janie said. ‘I just haven’t spoken to you in a while.’ I wanted to hear your voice, she thought. I wanted to check you’re doing all right.