‘We’re not living together in the sense of living together as a couple. I mean, we live together, and we’re together, but we’re not living together. We just happen to be a couple who live in a house together. Harper lives there too,’ I say, descending into babble and making big hand gestures.

‘It’s very casual,’ Harper says, then pauses. ‘I mean, the living situation. Their relationship is serious, or semi-serious. Well, no, it’s serious, but our house is casual, it all has a casual feel.’ She’s worse than I am. She looks at me, helpless and apologetic.

My scalp feels itchy and sweaty. Is that normal, when you lie, for your head to sweat? And itch? I know I have lied many times before, I must have, but not like this, a whole big scenario.

‘I just can’t get over this,’ Tristan says, and he turns and sits down on the couch, next to Henry, as though he’s settling in for a long conversation. ‘I have so many questions,’ he adds.

This might have been a huge mistake.

‘I mean, there’s not much to tell,’ I say, sitting down too. Jesse sits next to me, and I am acutely aware of the amount of space between us. At a glance, about fifteen centimetres. That’s too much. That’s platonic space. We need to reduce it to a couple of centimetres at most. I shuffle a bit closer, in the most subtle way I can, until our legs are near touching.

‘Let’s go back to the beginning. How long exactly have you two been together?’ Tristan asks.

‘About a month,’ Jesse says without hesitation. A month. Okay, yes. That’s a believable amount of time. I just need to very quickly think of a potential month’s worth of fake memories and lies.

I lean back against the couch and Jesse does too, and his shoulder touches mine and his whole body is very close. We’ve never sat this close before. On the nights we’ve been sitting up watching TV together, we stay on opposite ends of the couch, a blanket sometimes stretching the distance between us, our feet bumping one another occasionally. To be this close, gently touching from shoulder down to our knees, feels good. No, more than good. It’s almost thrilling. It’s probably just the adrenaline from the lying, or maybe my body has developed an involuntary physiological reaction to Jesse’s body, a deep, automatic, biological response that is completely separate from my actual feelings.

‘So, I’m sorry, I know I’m dwelling on this, but how did you two get past all your issues?’ Tristan is asking.

‘All their issues?’ Harper says.

‘Jesse and Brooke really did not get along in high school,’ Tristan says.

I can see Harper absorbing this information, tucking it away to discuss later. She and Penny exchange a look.