Lissy repeated herself while Chloe tore through her diary and found the day. Fuck. Fucking fuck. She had absolutely sworn blind that she would meet Lissy in central London, to go for high tea with Claudia. They had booked it when Lissy was seven and a half months pregnant and told that she had to be on bed rest. She had been utterly furious to lose her independence and Chloe had spent dozens of afternoons in her bedroom, planning all the things they would do when she got her freedom back. And they had booked this what felt like a lifetime ago, as something to look forward to. A treat.

‘I’m getting the train,’ she said, her voice too cheerful. ‘I’ll see you soon.’

‘Okay. Can’t wait! Claudia is wearing her first grown-up dress for the occasion and she’s dying to see you.’

Claudia’s eyesight would only just be good enough by this point to see her if she was a metre or two away. But Chloe was in no position to correct Lissy. She hung up, frantically dialled for a cab and blanched at the figure they quoted. It was rush hour, and it was going to take forty-five minutes to get into central London, and cost a fortune. Never mind. She turned her attention to her appearance. The plan had been to wash her hair that morning. The roots were getting darker, which made it look even dirtier, and she had a spot on her chin. She swept her make-up off the dressing table into her handbag and pulled a pretty summer dress out of her wardrobe, jamming trainers on to her feet.

The traffic moved so slowly that every three minutes Chloe thought about getting out and walking. She was late. The dashboard of the taxi viciously displayed the time, taunting her with every minute she was later and later. Lissy kept sending her messages. Their tea slot was only ninety minutes. The car crawled, her phone pinged and she vibrated with stress, and with anger at herself for being so stupid and at Lissy for being so obsessive. Why had they even booked this ruinously expensive tea? The hotel wouldn’t be baby friendly and it was going to be stupidly overpriced, plus they would be pushed out the second their slot finished. How could anyone want to be so tied to times? Zadie never had been. She had woken up when she felt like it, turned up to lectures if they sounded interesting, arrived whenever seemed right.

Eventually, they reached the top of the road. Chloe abandoned the cab and legged it, realizing that the weather was actually freezing and the summer dress a huge mistake. She pushed her way through the huge wooden doors and saw Lissy sitting at the far end of the lobby. She waved, saturated with relief that she was only fifteen minutes late.

‘Madam?’ came a voice from behind her.

‘Yes?’