Poppy and I had given up on Felix’s appalling choices and left him to it. I’d lobbed a pair of wireless headphones at him and he was now happily ensconced in a big, squashy armchair, watching something that from what I could tell by the odd glance made up for its paper-thin plot with oceans of blood and gore. Poppy and I continued our chat about the children, Bake Off and what we hoped for from the next series of Sewing Bee until Felix’s phone began to ring. Wrapped up in the violence of his apocalyptic nightmare, he didn’t hear it, so Poppy tossed it over, making an excellent shot of landing it on his full stomach. He let out an ‘oof’, paused the gore and answered the video call.

‘Jack, mate. How are you?’

Poppy and I turned back to our conversation until my brother interrupted. ‘Hang on. I’m just going to cast this onto the TV. We can all see you then.’

I looked at him momentarily in horror. ‘That TV has a webcam,’ I whispered. ‘He’ll be able to see us too!’

My brother gave me a look that appeared to question my intelligence. ‘That’s kind of the point of video calls, Lils.’

As I opened my mouth to reply, I was halted by a forty-two-inch high-definition picture of Jack Coulsdon-Hart filling my living room. I’d only seen him briefly a few times over the years, and therefore my strongest memory of Jack remained a night in my late teens at a village party and, although my recollection of that night was somewhat clouded and yet still mortifyingly vivid, he had, if possible, only got better looking with age. Of course he had.

Jack had often been around our house – Felix, loyally, didn’t speak about Jack’s home life much. I don’t think even he was entirely sure of all the facts, but it was hard not to notice that he spent as little time at home as possible. They’d been friends from living in the same small village but had cemented their friendship at university. Felix was bright and worked hard to get into Cambridge. Jack was bright but, whether it was admitted or not, had the extra benefit of having been to Eton and being the son of an earl. This wasn’t something he ever talked about and most of the time we all forgot. Until a chauffeur would turn up at our house with the liveried man advising that his mother would like him to return home now. Jack always looked mortified whenever this happened. I’d catch him glancing out of the window occasionally when he came round to hang out with Felix (not that I was looking at him, obviously). When he did catch me looking, he’d give the briefest smile and try to look relaxed. I might have been younger, but I wasn’t stupid.

Seeing him on the screen now revived those memories in my mind. The night of the village summer fête was always a brilliant evening. Had it not been for the embarrassment I suffered that night, it probably would have been another teenage memory that drifted into the recesses of my mind. But that night, emboldened by friends and an ill-judged number of piña coladas, I’d approached Jack in what I’d considered a sexy, flirtatious way. Looking back now, and also by the look on his face at the time, it was likely neither of those things. Time and alcohol had erased the exact words I’d used but, oh Lord, it was definitely something ridiculous about how it must be nice to be so tall and be able to reach things on high shelves.