‘Come on!’ he said with a grin. ‘You can do it!’ A woman ran towards him, luggage in both hands. She approached the doors. ‘YES! MY WIFE!’ he shouted triumphantly, holding both arms aloft in celebration as if she had reached the end of a marathon. They both stumbled on to the carriage and caught their breath. They laughed.

‘Good job, mate,’ she said. They found two seats, still breathless and laughing, and arranged their bags and baby paraphernalia around them in a sprawling mess. I realized I was staring when they both caught my eye inquisitively. I jerked my head away and looked out at the passing city. Lola squeezed my hand. I smiled at her and squeezed it back. I’d never felt more grateful for her friendship than since Max’s disappearance.

Max may have no longer been in my life or on my phone, but he was everywhere I went and in nearly every thought I had. I had spent Christmas at home, staring at my phone like it was 2002. I had spent New Year with Lola, clanking our glasses together for meaningless toasts about hating all men. I had spent January writing the first few chapters of the new book, grateful to have a new work project and a deadline on which to focus. I hadn’t experienced this type of pervasive love sickness since I was a teenager – it was impossible to rid my thoughts of him. I’d notice a knot in the wood of a table that looked like his nose in profile. When two of the letters M, A or X were adjacent on a page, my eyes would instinctively dart to those words first. I heard him in song lyrics, I saw him in crowds on tube platforms. It was bone-achingly tiring and oppressively dull. Daydreaming of him, while previously satisfying when we were together, was now like MSG for the mind. It expanded in my brain, making me feel momentarily full, and then quickly disappeared, making me feel horribly empty. An abundance couldn’t satiate me and none of it felt nourishing. And yet I couldn’t stop. Lola told me there was no way to bypass this stage of a break-up and I had to go through it. My fear was that the feeling would linger because there was nothing final to mourn.

‘Right, what are we expecting from this one?’ Lola asked, while looking in a monogrammed compact mirror and loading more make-up on to her already plenty-adorned face. ‘Stripper?’

‘No, definitely not, Lucy’s a prude.’

‘Prudes love strippers though.’

‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘And chocolate body paint. And massage oils. Classic sign of someone who doesn’t enjoy sex that much, if they own massage oils.’

‘So, no stripper,’ she said. ‘What else do you think they’ve organized?’ I took out my phone and opened the hen do WhatsApp group named LUJOE HENS! which had been pinging incessantly since its inception six weeks ago.

‘There’d better be a lot of booze for the amount that we’ve had to contribute for food and drinks.’

‘There never is,’ she said. ‘It will be one bottle a head for the whole weekend and one slice of overcooked lasagne.’

We were the last ones to arrive at the large house in the Surrey countryside that was rented for Lucy’s hen do. Most of the twenty-five – twenty-five – women who were attending had opted in for the full three-night stay, whereas Lola and I were only coming for the Saturday night and Sunday daytime. We were greeted by Franny, the maid of honour, Lucy’s best friend and a professional soprano, which I have always found is an entire genre of woman. They were normally in possession of very large breasts which they’d developed at a young age and therefore had a quiet sense of imperiousness in any all-female group. They were angry at everyone while also being jolly about everything. They also wore silver Celtic jewellery and floaty dresses and blouses that, quite rightly, exhibited their impressive cleavage. Franny, immediately, met all those expectations.

‘Hello, latecomers!’ she trilled merrily. ‘Nina and Lola?’

‘Yes! Here we are! So happy to be here!’ Lola said with a huge smile. She was so good at this; at throwing herself into any uncomfortable situation with enthusiasm: immersive theatre, stand-up comedy shows, hen dos organized by bossy sopranos. I was in awe of her.

‘Hello!’ I said, comparatively weakly. ‘I’m Nina.’ I shook her hand formally.

‘And I’m Lola!’ Lola said, embracing her.

‘Well, lovely, so glad you made it in one piece. Why don’t you pop your things upstairs in your room, you’ll see your names on the door. Then head back down for a glass of fizz and we can get going with today’s activities!’

‘Great!’ I said.

Lola and I carried our bags upstairs and walked along the winding corridors until we reached a twin room with our names written on a sign in swirly glitter glue.

‘He’s still online,’ Lola said, throwing her bag on the bed and staring at her phone screen. ‘I mean – what woman has the time to sit on WhatsApp all day talking to him endlessly? It’s an uneconomic use of time. They should just meet up and shag.’

‘What man does, Lola? Don’t blame the woman.’

‘True. Also, I think he might be spreading it out. I think there might be a handful on rotation, so they each get a few hours of his time per day on a schedule.’

‘Wow, what a treat for them,’ I said, scraping my hair back off my face into a topknot. ‘I’m so gutted to be a straight woman. It’s all just so gutting.’

‘LADIEEEEES!’ we heard Franny wail from downstairs. ‘Time for some fizz!’

‘Fizz,’ I said. ‘That word is only ever used in a room of women who all secretly hate each other.’

‘Oh, Nina, cheer up.’

‘If today is terrible can we leave early tomorrow? Can I make up a reason for us and we can leave?’

‘Yes, but try to be nice. Remember you’re doing this for Joe.’

Downstairs, the other twenty-three women were all milling around the kitchen. Franny was fussily pouring supermarket prosecco into everyone’s glasses and Lucy was sitting on a dining chair with a gold crown on her head and a huge badge on her chest that said THE HEN.

‘Nina!’ she said, standing as she saw me. ‘And Lola! Aw, so glad you’re here, lovely girls.’ She pulled us both in for a three-way hug. ‘This is a new hairdo,’ she said, pointing at my topknot. ‘Love it, very practical.’

‘Happy hen do!’ I said. ‘Are you having a lovely time?’

‘Yes! Have you met my very bestie, Franny?’ She beckoned Franny over, who brought two glasses for us.

‘Yes, she’s been such a superstar organizing everything,’ Lola said.

‘She’s the greatest,’ Lucy said, putting her arm around her. ‘So organized. Führer Franny we used to call her at school!’

Franny was beaming, standing with extraordinary posture, her back overly arched in a balletic way.

‘How do you all know each other?’ Franny asked.

‘So, Lola and Nina are university friends of Joe’s,’ Lucy said. ‘Nina is actually going to be an usher at the wedding!’

‘How funny!’ Franny said. ‘A girl usher. Why weren’t you a bridesmaid instead?’

‘Oh, because she’s Joe’s best friend,’ Lucy said breezily. ‘Besides, Nina’s not very into dresses and things, are you?’

‘Right, I think it’s time for our next activity, Lulu,’ Franny said, clapping her hands together.

I took a big gulp of prosecco and held my breath, but it made no difference – when would I be allowed to stop drinking this thin, sour, fruity venom of terrible parties and terrible conversation?

‘EVERYBODY!’ she shouted suddenly, pulling up a chair and standing on it in an entirely unnecessary gesture of a town crier. ‘QUIET, EVERYONE! If you could each take a chair and arrange them in a semi-circle. We’re going to ask our hen to sit in the middle of us and we’re all going to make a collage of her! We’ve got lots of different materials and pencils and chalks for you to play with here, so just have some fun with it and we’ll see what we come up with!’

‘Are we all doing one big collage?’ one woman asked.

‘No, no,’ Franny said with slight panic, as if the whole plan was already coming apart. ‘No, ONE COLLAGE EACH. EVERYONE, LISTEN. ONE COLLAGE EACH. There’s plenty of paper for everyone.’

‘What’s Lucy going to do with twenty-four collages of herself?’ I asked Lola under my breath.

‘Wallpaper her downstairs loo?’ she replied.

I laughed and swallowed some prosecco the wrong way, which made me splutter.

‘Oh dear, you all right, Nina?’ Franny said from on high.

‘Yes, fine, sorry.’

We dutifully assembled in a semi-circle around Lucy who showed not a shred of self-consciousness at being stared at by twenty-four women as their subject. I have yet to encounter a more widely acceptable exercise of extreme narcissism than that of being the protagonist of a hen do.

‘So sorry, can I just ask one more question?’ one of the women asked.

‘Yes?’ Franny said impatiently.

‘Is the collage just of Lucy’s face and body or is it more us … capturing her personality?’