Chloe drew her hair into a bun, enjoying the relief of pulling the warmth of it away from her sticky neck. The ends were dry, but her roots were looking dark – the eternal tug of war that came with being a bottle blonde. ‘Too hot for that. We’d melt.’

‘Hide outside?’

‘Their house overlooks our garden. Remind me never to commit a crime with you – you’d be useless.’ Chloe pushed him into the kitchen. ‘Have a beer. You’ll be glad when they’re here.’ Rav did this a lot. Invited people over, cramming their diary with social engagements and then complaining about them just before they started.

Rav pouted. ‘Will I?’

‘Yes. You always are. You love Guy. You’ll be talking to him about rugby all night. It’ll be me who gets stuck talking mucus plugs and second-degree vaginal tearing with Lissy.’

Rav smiled. ‘We’ll never be like that, right?’

‘Not if we don’t have kids.’

Rav cracked open a bottle of beer. ‘Blasphemy.’

‘Oh, come on, we could be one of those really chic couples who have loads of money and a really small dog, or a bird or something.’

He laughed. ‘My mother would murder me.’

‘I think you’d find she’d murder me.’ Chloe reached up to kiss Rav on the lips. ‘She’d never hurt her little prince.’

The doorbell rang. ‘Fuck,’ said Rav. ‘Too late.’

Chloe hovered in the galley kitchen, then took a bottle of white wine out of the fridge and got glasses down from the shelf. Pouring the yellow liquid, she watched Rav pull the door open and throw his arms around Guy, who was handsome but had the shell-shocked look of a man who wasn’t entirely prepared for fatherhood.

‘Mate! Who is this?’ Chloe watched as Rav dropped to his knees to get face to face with the carrier. The extent to which Rav liked babies always seemed at odds with everything else about him.

‘She’s sleeping,’ said Lissy, clearly trying to sound like she didn’t mind whether Rav woke baby Claudia up or not. Lissy’s hair was still wet at the ends and the skin under her eyes was violet. So she was doing all the night feeds, then.

‘Hello, you,’ said Chloe, beckoning Lissy through into the living room and pressing a glass of wine into her hand. If she had asked whether Lissy was drinking, she would have had to endure a half-hour monologue about how Lissy had read all the breastfeeding research – not just the NHS guidelines, which were designed to cater to the ‘lowest common denominator’, but proper medical studies in the BMJ – which miraculously proved that Lissy was allowed to drink as much Sauvignon as she wanted. It was easier not to ask.