I get to the office and, such is the harshness of the weather, even the hardened smokers have abandoned their post and I don’t see Monica and Charlotte until I stomp, steaming, into the stuffy, overheated offices. They both shriek when they see me and rush over from their desks.

‘Ohmigod! Ohmigod!’ Charlotte trills. ‘You’re back!’

I’d emailed them to warn them of my imminent return to incarceration in the world of minor-magazine publishing, but given their reaction, I don’t think they really expected me to turn up. They jump around me, clapping happily, and welcoming me as if I’m the prodigal son returning to the fold.

Charlotte starts to unwind my scarf, while Monica takes my coat, fussing round me. My boss ushers me to my seat. Like Jake, she’s treating me as if I’m pregnant—and the thought doesn’t even give me a moment’s anxiety.

‘We saved your desk for you.’ Monica checks it for dust.

I look at my clean and tidy desk with my fabulous view and fail to feel any spark of excitement.

‘Although I did keep it warm while you were away,’ she admits. ‘It’s a great desk.’

I look out over the pewter ribbon of the river and at the clock on the art deco Ministry of Defence building across the water. It’s not yet nine o’clock. I think I can see that clock far too clearly. I sit down at my clutter-free workspace and smooth my hands over its alien surface.

‘Charlotte,’ Monica says. ‘Go and get Lyssa some coffee.’

Charlotte scoots away. I wonder how long this treatment will last. I’ll give it until lunchtime.

Monica perches on the edge of my desk. ‘Have you made a decision yet?’

‘About what?’ Jake? Dean? My life? Monica knows so little of these things, but again she probably will by lunchtime. I didn’t give the girls a second thought while I was away, but now that I’m here, I realise that I have, in a strange way, missed them. I feel myself slipping under the waves of my previous existence.

‘About what?’ She laughs. ‘Silly!’

I look at her blankly.

‘It’s big-decision time,’ she says. ‘Ta-da! My Baby or My Divorce?’ She holds the choice up to me as if it’s a prize in a game show.

‘Oh,’ I say. ‘That.’

She looks at me as if I’m mad, and I can see the thought go through her mind that I may not have got my act together anymore than when I left. ‘How was Nepal?’ she asks tentatively.

I get a flashback of lush fields, rice terraces, towering peaks and dark brown eyes. ‘Fabulous.’

‘And it helped?’