As Tess left, Laurel’s phone buzzed with an incoming text. ‘Sorry, but I’d better check it’s not something important from Rea or Daisy,’ she apologised, slipping the phone from her back pocket. But the message was from Alex and short enough to read on the lock screen: Are you OK? x She gazed at it, trying to decide how it made her feel. She was the last person to object to friends keeping an eye out for each other – but her ex? That felt uncomfortably like being checked up on. If she replied, she’d be reporting in. If she didn’t, he might ring.

Grady gave a snort of laughter. ‘You’re pulling ferocious faces. Has Daisy volunteered you for another job?’

Unwillingly, she laughed, too. ‘It’s Alex, my ex-husband. I’m just trying to decide whether he’s being caring or interfering.’ Quickly she typed back, All OK, with no thanks and no kiss.

Can’t help worrying. Are you still out with the brother? x pinged straight back.

She read the new message, aware of Grady sitting opposite her, his legs inches away, Grady who’d been nothing but a great guy but had copped the fallout from his brother’s past behaviour. It felt disloyal to even read the cold and faintly hostile phrase ‘the brother’. She tried to think of a message that would end the conversation and make Alex aware he was trespassing too far, without souring their so-far-friendly divorce. Eventually, she typed, I’m fine. You’re not to worry about me anymore, which seemed to her unequivocal but not snarky.

When she put her phone away, she found Grady regarding her with curiosity. ‘You’re still on good terms?’

‘With Alex? So far, yes.’ Four people at a nearby table suddenly roared with laughter, making a wall of noise for Laurel to hide her words behind. ‘If it wasn’t for my infertility, we might have been OK.’ Perhaps it was the three gins but she heard herself add, wistfully, ‘It was just the trying to make a baby and failing. Then, when even trying became difficult, we knew it was time to call a halt.’ She stopped short of actually saying that poor Alex had suffered what he’d termed ‘equipment failure’. The memory was too sharply painful, lying side-by-side on the bed, each coming to the bitter realisation that Alex no longer found sex with her exciting. That moment brought it starkly home that they should quit while they were still friends. And Alex should be free.

Grady’s eyes were shadowed with understanding. The nearby foursome raised tipsy voices, talking over each other in their eagerness to recount some funny story. He sat up to lean in so he could position his head close to hers. ‘I wasn’t part of the decision with Pippa, but I see how painful that must have been. I’m really sorry it happened to you.’