It didn’t use to be like this. When Chloe and Rav had first moved to London, two years into their relationship and desperate to be in the city, they’d rented a flat in the same Georgian house as Guy and Lissy. The four of them had been in and out of each other’s flats, sunbathing on the roof, getting pissed in the shared back garden, cobbling together roast lunches in their cramped kitchens. But then, eighteen months ago, something had shifted. It was as if Guy and Lissy had suddenly decided that it was time to be grown-ups. They had bought a house on the next street and Rav had decided that it was time to move somewhere smaller to save up for a house. Which was how they’d ended up living in this place. It was lovely – the kitchen led out into the garden, the ceilings were high and the windows were huge, but it was unquestionably small. Every cupboard was topped with boxes, every piece of furniture had suitcases and storage boxes shoved underneath it. She and Rav were almost literally bursting out of the place. ‘Soon,’ Rav kept saying, ‘we’ll buy somewhere bigger.’ Chloe sometimes looked at their joint bank account and wondered how Rav could be so sure when the numbers there stayed so solidly mediocre.

Occasionally, when Rav was out, Chloe would look on property websites as if they were hard-core porn. She would tease herself with the huge, comfortable places they could afford to buy if they weren’t locked into a prestigious postcode where only people with generous parents could live. Unlike most of their friends, they hadn’t ever had a loan from the bank of mum and dad: Chloe because her stepfather was so hideously tight, and Rav because – well, Chloe wasn’t entirely sure why. She assumed he had always been too proud to ask.

As she carried the blue-and-white plates to the dishwasher she turned to Rav and said, sotto voce, ‘Nice save.’

‘What?’

‘Getting out of next Saturday. I can’t do two weeks of birth chat in a row.’

Rav laughed. ‘It wasn’t a save. We’re out next Saturday.’

‘It’s not in the diary.’

‘Really? I’m sure I told you.’

Chloe shook her head. ‘No. What are we doing?’

Rav put the salad bowl down on the side, pulled a bottle of wine from the fridge and, as he headed outside, said, ‘Having dinner with Max.’

‘Excuse me?’ she replied to Rav’s turned back. But he was already in the garden, falling cheerfully into a chair. Chloe stared at him through the doorway, her lips parted and suddenly dry, her head painfully tight.

‘Chlo, Chlo, look what Claudia is doing!’ said Lissy in a stage whisper. Chloe picked up the jug of water she had refilled and, dazed, went back into the garden to appreciate the spit bubble baby Claudia had created.