Mike. Like her shadow, like an old illness she thought she’d recovered from that crept back into her bones, so that every time Karen thought she’d moved on there he was. Carl the electrician, a decent simple man; Jim the university lecturer with the ex-wife and two blonde daughters. OK, neither perfect, but both a chance for her to have a life, a husband of her own at these get-togethers instead of waiting for scraps from Ali’s table. Like a messed-up harem, but Ali didn’t even know she was in one. Rearranging the plates while under their feet roared a vast fault line. How could Karen do this, sleep with her best friend’s husband? It was like being two people at once. She loved Ali, she’d go after anyone who hurt her. But she’d also slept with Ali’s husband, over and over, time and time again as the years went by. She’d try to stop, get on with her life – she’d even moved to Birmingham to try and end it – and then Ali would say we really must all get together, and Karen would walk into a room and see him and it would all start again.

She and Mike knew the dark core of each other. Even though he’d said that afternoon it was over – I can’t do this any more, it’s not fair to Ali – even though Karen felt the blow like a slow-leaking wound she’d been walking around on all night, covering her pain with bright, flirty laughter, even with all that, part of her knew it likely wasn’t over this time either. She had lied to Ali about that, she wasn’t sure why. Trying to salvage some pride, maybe. They’d been here before, after all – all the way through university on and off, sneaking to his room when she was meant to be in the library; surely the reason she’d failed her Finals. A tense drink in a Wetherspoons near London Bridge when he’d moved out here, a tearful alleyway shag before Karen went to Birmingham. The elastic lines between them pinging back each time. Then the guilty meetings in London, the afternoons in the pub when he was supposed to be working, the Megabus down, Mike putting his wedding ring on the bedside table of the hotel room you could rent for the afternoon. She hated the fact he planned ahead like that. She wanted it to always be overwhelming, something primal between them. Because how else could she justify sleeping with her best friend’s husband?