Daniel nodded in agreement. ‘All of them even more glamorous than flouncing about in fancy restaurants.’

‘I think she once mentioned working on a fishing trawler? The pay was terrible but you got herring for breakfast.’

Then we were both laughing, and then I was crying again, and Daniel reached across the table and took hold of my hand, in a nice, older-brother-of-my-best-friend type of way, and that made me cry even more, because I really liked it here. I was starting to really like this man too, but now, with one throwaway lie-by-omission, I’d erected a firm barrier between us. As safe as this place might feel, as much as how Charlie inviting me here had been about regifting what the Tufted Duck had been to her – a sanctuary, somewhere I could simply be me – it was now the opposite of that. A place where, once again, I had to hide, and lie, and keep my shameful secret squashed away in the dark.

There was no one left alive who knew the truth and still loved me. The one person who’d claimed he did had turned out to be a big, fat fake. How could I expect Daniel to know the kind of things I’d written and tweeted and posted about people and still like me? Let alone want me here?

Was Nora Sharp going to haunt me for the rest of my life?

8

I’d met Marcus last June at the opening of a new ‘nutritional experience’ in Shoreditch. Crammed into a venue which could have once been the shoebox for the ergonomically designed trainers the manager-owner had sent me as an inducement to attend, it made room for three tables, a ‘rejuvenation zone’, containing yoga mats, kettle bells and stretchy rope things, and the ‘rejuicination zone’, which to my professional eye looked like a bog-standard takeaway counter.

Lucy hadn’t come, seeing as she hated anything sports related. I’d intended to pop in for a quick taste of the menu samples, a slurp or two of their beet latte and cheese tea, which I fully anticipated would taste like liquidised toe-fluff, and as in-depth a conversation with the owner as I could manage without arousing suspicion. I hadn’t worn the trainers, as that would be a dead giveaway, but had splashed out on the kind of outfit I thought women who attended nutritional experiences at nine o’clock on a Monday evening would probably wear: black and silver leggings, a sleeveless running top artfully cutaway to reveal my sports bra, and Lucy’s smartest trainers.

I sidled in and began ambling around, feigning studious interest in the information posters and nodding appreciatively as the owner made his rambling speech about optimal performance and micronutrient replenishment, repeatedly interrupting himself by punching the air and shouting, ‘Fit don’t quit!’

‘Nora Sharp, I presume?’ Someone whispered in my ear, causing me to clutch my biodegradable juice carton so hard that the juice spurted out of the top and left a fluorescent green stain on the trainers.