‘Or you could stay and take care of yourself. You’re not her mother. Eventually, she is going to have to look after herself.’

‘Eventually, yes, but I can’t just leave her right now.’

‘She left. Not you. Listen, I adore Zadie, but she doesn’t want anyone to be happy. She doesn’t mean to be like this, so selfish, so dramatic. She loves you. She loves me. But she doesn’t know how to love us, and if you give her an inch, she’ll take a million miles. She sees you getting close to Rav and making your own friends and it scares her. She wants to take you away from everyone else so you’re just hers. But if you let her, she won’t want you any more.’

Chloe sighed. She knew she should tell Max he was wrong. Call the police. Never mind what that meant for his future. Or hers.

‘I’ve been going out with her for six years. I know how to handle her. The best thing you can do is get back in the hot tub, have a glass of rosé and try to enjoy what’s left of the weekend. Give Rav the snog he’s clearly been chasing all weekend.’

So she did as she was told. And every time the guilt knife twisted in her stomach, she told it that she was only staying another twenty-four hours, that Zadie hadn’t wanted to talk, or to be looked after, and that, when she got home, Zadie would be there, telling herself she was being practical, not just trying to save her own skin.

But of course, Zadie wasn’t there. On Monday they were due to be going back to university around midday. Chloe woke earlier and couldn’t wait. The guilt had become too much, too loud, too insistent. She got a lift to the station with one of the waiting staff, who seemed to have been instructed to bend over backwards. She paid an eyewatering amount for a train ticket and willed the train to move faster, cursing every single pause on the line. Chloe went to her own room first. Everything Zadie owned was gone – all her clothes, all her books, everything – and the scent of her was a little stronger in the air than it had been when Chloe had left. She walked to Archer Crescent double quick, counting her steps, praying that her every instinct was wrong. She rang the doorbell for minutes at a time, then pounded on the door until her hands ached. She sat on the doorstep, listening for any tiny noise, praying to hear Zadie’s feet on the wooden floor. But there was nothing.