I shrugged. ‘Don’t worry about it. I think we’d be hard-pushed to find a woman Jason knew and hadn’t tried to get into bed, don’t you?’

‘But, doesn’t it—’ she began.

‘Bother me? No, it doesn’t, not anymore. So don’t let it bother you. He told me what happened and said that he felt bad about it and I believe him.’

‘Jason told you about me?’ she asked uncertainly.

‘Mmhmm.’

‘What did he say?’ she asked, clearly on edge.

‘That he regretted his behaviour and that he had apologised to you for it.’

She appeared to think for a moment and then bit her lip. ‘I should have told you that he kept hassling me.’ She closed her eyes and shook her head. ‘But how do you tell a friend that without hurting them? So, I just made it clear to him that there was no way I was interested.’ She opened her eyes and looked at me appealingly. ‘If I’d known that it was all part of a bigger pattern of behaviour, then obviously I would have told you.’

‘Like I say, I’m not angry with Jason anymore. I just hope that he can sustain a change. He says he wants to.’

She smiled sadly, leaning back in her chair and visibly relaxing, clearly judging – not unreasonably – that Jason had decided against telling me the whole story. ‘After all he put you through,’ she said, her tone now warmly maternal. ‘I just don’t know how you can believe a word he says, Edie.’

And that, I decided, would be the last condescending thing she would ever say to me.

‘I can believe him, Ruby,’ I began steadily, ‘because he has kept every single text the pair of you have exchanged since I first introduced you to him three years ago. I haven’t read them all, just enough to get a very clear picture of timings, of his desperate squirmings, and of your absolute determination to bed him as soon as he was my ex – having failed, of course, in your impressively persistent attempts to bed him while he was still my partner.’

Her expression rapidly transitioned through shock, disbelief and rage, before cooling into what appeared to be a hardened, icy acceptance of the facts. She then stared impassively at me for what felt like a lifetime, before picking up her bag and rising slowly to her feet. She didn’t make eye contact with me again after that, and ‘I never liked this place,’ was all she said, as she turned and walked away.

I watched her go, my body rigid as I focused exclusively on her receding figure and then on the doorway through which she had exited. Only when, after several minutes, I felt certain that she wasn’t coming back to order a second glass of wine and throw it all over me, did I collapse back into my armchair and close my eyes.