Rav was right about the house. It was great. Chic, and tastefully done. The hall was high-ceilinged and had wooden floorboards. The staircase gave on to an open-plan basement kitchen, sparklingly clean and magazine-modern, looking out over a wide green garden. How much would all of this have cost? Millions. Several millions. Clearly, things were going well for Max. But then that couldn’t come as any kind of surprise.

‘We redecorated a lot of it,’ Max was saying as he busied himself in the kitchen. ‘Structurally, it was fine, but the previous lot were some awful internet celebrities, after every interiors trend going. We wanted it to be a bit more timeless.’

Max had always been a ‘we’, as long as Chloe had known him. In fact, this was all almost exactly how she had imagined it would be when they got older. Her and Rav, dinner at Max’s incredible house. The only thing wrong was the woman who slid open the French doors and came in from the garden, a pair of secateurs in one hand and a bunch of herbs in the other.

‘This,’ said Max, striding across the kitchen and wrapping his arms around the waist of the tiny woman, ‘is Verity.’

As they bumped cheeks and exchanged pleasantries, Chloe drank Verity in. Her limbs had the kind of thinness that made clothes look expensive even when they weren’t – though hers clearly were. She wore a cream silk blouse tucked into high-waisted jeans cinched in with a Gucci belt. His ’n’ hers, thought Chloe, snidely. Verity’s hair was long and wavy, just dark enough blonde that it might be natural. Chloe pulled the strap of her dress on to her shoulder, feeling overdressed and far too tall in her heels.

‘What can I get you to drink?’ asked Verity, her voice sweet, and with a hint of an accent.

‘White wine,’ said Chloe.

‘Whatever’s open,’ said Rav at the same time. Chloe tried not to roll her eyes. Rav’s deference was exhausting.

‘We’ve got a bottle of this on the go,’ said Max, holding up a bottle of Taittinger. ‘Will that do, Coco?’

Chloe didn’t like champagne any more; she found it too sharp and acrid. Perhaps she’d drunk too much of it in the year that she and Max had been friends. But she didn’t want to be rude. ‘Sure,’ she said, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

‘I gather congratulations are in order,’ Chloe said, for lack of anything better to say.

Verity looked up from the chopping board and smiled. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘It was quite a surprise.’

‘You’ve had a busy time of it, mate.’ Rav nudged Max’s arm. ‘New house, new fiancée. You’re turning into a real grown-up.’