‘Is that what you’re wearing?’ asked Rav, coming into the bedroom, his hair freshly pushed back with water, beads of it on his skin. Even when he was irritating her, even when he was forcing her to go to dinner with the person she could stand least in the world, she couldn’t help noticing how obscenely beautiful he was. His mother’s skin tone, her huge eyes. His father’s cheekbones. Long, lean muscles.

‘Yes,’ she said. Then she weakened. ‘Did you have something else in mind?’

‘No, no,’ he replied, dragging a towel over his head.

Chloe cocked her head to one side. ‘Really?’

He put his hands up as if she were pointing a gun at him, trying to laugh his way off the wafer-thin ice. ‘I just thought that pink one from the other day was nice, that’s all. It was a bit more … party.’

The ‘pink one’ was a short, silk dress with spaghetti straps and a flirty skirt. She’d bought it out shopping with Lissy. She had only tried it on because she’d been so agonizingly bored of hearing about nipple shields, but when she’d looked in the mirror at herself she’d wondered if the dress had some sort of magic. A heavily pregnant Lissy had said something about wanting to jump in front of a bus because she was so fat and had then compelled Chloe to buy it. It was a dress for a better evening than this one.

‘If you want to give Max something pretty to look at,’ said Chloe, doing up the buttons on the front of her dress, ‘you’re welcome to borrow the pink one.’

Rav shook his head and fastened the buckle to his belt. ‘Do you really still hate him so much?’

Chloe spritzed perfume on her wrists. ‘Are you calling the Uber or am I?’

Perhaps he knew he was in dangerous territory, or maybe he didn’t want to hear the answer. Either way, he picked up his phone and left the bedroom. ‘I’ll do it,’ he called back.

Chloe had just finished redoing her eye make-up – not as neatly as the first time – when Rav shouted, ‘The car’s going to be here in two minutes.’ He was already standing on the doorstep. ‘Ready?’

She picked up her bag. ‘Ready,’ she said, closing the bedroom door behind her and pulling the skinny strap back up her shoulder. Rav grinned. ‘You changed.’

‘I did.’ She smiled. ‘Entirely for your benefit. Have you got the wine?’