‘All okay?’ asked Rav, coming in through the French doors. He wiped his feet then reclaimed his wine glass. ‘I heard a noise?’

‘Chloe had a little accident,’ said Max, who had picked up the pieces of the jug and thrown a fancy-looking towel down.

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Rav, as if he had had anything to do with it. ‘We’ll replace whatever it was, of course. Maybe we should head off before we destroy anything else.’

There was an edge to Rav’s voice, as if he knew something had happened while he was outside, that there was more to this accident. Verity seemed happy enough, putting things away in the fridge. But then, she had been a little girl when Max and Chloe had been running around together, their lives so completely entangled. Rav, on the other hand, had been a spectator. He knew exactly how much history he was up against.

In some ways, it was a relief that Rav was bothered, that he was willing to be even the tiniest bit territorial towards Max. Chloe had sort of assumed that Rav would let Max say, do or have anything he wanted. Including Chloe.

The Tube on the way home was, blessedly, packed. Usually when they went out for dinner with friends, they loved the post-mortem. How had the food been? Who seemed happy and who seemed like they might be destined for a break-up? Gossiping about their friends was one of their closest shared hobbies. But Rav didn’t want to talk about how young Verity was, or to get the property app up on his phone so they could speculate how much the house was worth. They rode along in silence. By the time they got home Chloe’s mascara had seeped under her eyes, the straps of her dress had made red marks in her shoulders and her feet ached. She didn’t have to pretend very hard that she wanted to go to bed.

The flat felt even smaller than usual. She could see Rav looking at it, working out how many times it would fit in Max’s basement. The windows had been shut all evening and the air was oppressively warm, like standing over a radiator, which made it feel yet smaller. Chloe threw open the windows, but the evening was so still it did almost nothing to cool the room.

She made a half-hearted attempt at taking off her make-up and clambered into bed.

‘You’re wearing pyjamas,’ said Rav as he pulled back the sheet they were sleeping under.

‘Yes,’ said Chloe sleepily.

‘It’s so hot.’

‘Mm-hmm.’

‘So why the pyjamas? You usually sleep naked when it’s like this.’