At times, I found myself pulling back from my early, wholesale acceptance of his account. My gut instinct may have been to believe him, but then my gut instinct had been to believe him when he said he was re-parking the car at his Aunty Pam’s wake, when in fact he was having sex with his cousin’s wife in the cupboard where they kept the Toilet Duck. So what did I know? And while it was undeniable that the timeline he had provided regarding Ruby’s calls and texts did tie in with her various discussions with me, that didn’t mean that his entire account was accurate. Maybe, I reasoned, Ruby had contacted him only to warn him off, and maybe she had decided not to tell me about it because she didn’t want to worry me.

But it didn’t matter how many times I told myself all this, I still couldn’t completely silence the voice in my head which repeatedly whispered, barely pausing for breath, that Jason was telling the truth. Because, why would he lie? What possible advantage was there for him in telling me that he had managed to resist sleeping with my friend only until we’d split up? It hardly made him shoot up in the perfect partner stakes. All it did was confirm him as the despicable low-life I already knew him to be, and make me doubt Ruby – and he had been perfectly upfront about the latter being his intended purpose.

In this way, I spent my entire morning alternately running towards, and then stepping back from, the emotional precipice of accepting that a woman whom I had called a friend, in whom I had confided and had total trust, was actually as duplicitous as the ex with whom I had felt secure enough to purchase a three-bedroomed terrace in Hotwells. To sum up: I felt as confused, as conflicted and as far from my happy place as it was possible to be, a situation which did not go unnoticed by Luke.

‘You look even worse than you did yesterday,’ he said quietly, as he returned a drawing to me at the end of the morning. ‘I’ve scanned that in again for you,’ he added.

‘Thanks and thanks.’

He nodded and then, after glancing at Cameron and Roger, both of whom had their backs to us, he said, ‘Do you fancy lunch out? Might be a nice break.’

I pointed at the scribbled calls-to-make list on my desk and the plan now in my hand. ‘I’ve not made much headway with these this morning.’

‘That’s why I thought stepping away from them might help – seeing as staring at them hasn’t.’

I looked up at him again and then, realising that he was right, I nodded and reached for my coat.