‘Of course she’s taking it badly, she’s a toddler. Every toddler goes mental when a new baby arrives.’

‘I’m a bad mother, Nina,’ she said, her eyes becoming glassy. ‘I’m not doing a good enough job.’ Tears fell down both her cheeks, dappled pink as they always were when she cried.

‘No, you’re not. I know what sort of mother you are. You can lie to yourself, but you can’t lie to me.’

‘The other day, I was going so fucking insane, I went outside, locked Olive in the house, sat on the side of the road and didn’t go back in for fifteen minutes. When I came back, I found her in the bathroom, drinking the juice from the loo-brush holder like it was a beaker.’ This image made me desperate to laugh, but I managed to stifle it. ‘I was lucky. Anything could have happened.’

‘It’s okay, she wasn’t hurt.’

‘And last week, I was making her tea while Freddie was sleeping in his basket. When I wasn’t giving her enough attention, she went to hit him.’

‘What did you do?’

‘What I swore I’d never do, I grabbed her and I shook her. I was so angry.’

‘That’s understandable.’

‘No, it’s not, I’m the adult, I’m meant to know better. I’m not meant to lose my temper like a toddler.’ She looked to the ceiling and more tears spilt from her eyes. ‘All I am at the moment is a mother. I’m not interesting, I’m not engaged with the world. My whole life is feeding and changing and bedtime. If I’m not even doing that well, then I truly am totally fucking useless.’

‘Katherine, listen to me. I love your daughter – I would do anything for her. But Olive is, plain and simple, being a cunt.’ Katherine let out a piercing yelp of laughter. ‘She herself isn’t a cunt, she’s a delight. But at the moment, she’s behaving like a cunt. And that would test the patience of anyone.’

‘She is,’ Katherine said, wiping her face. ‘My daughter is being a cunt.’

‘Well done.’

‘My daughter is being a total and utter cunt.’

‘There we go.’

She retrieved her mug of coffee and leant her face into the warmth of its fumes.

‘You have to be able to talk to me about this stuff, Katherine. You’ve got to drop the Stepford act, it does no one any good. It annoys me and it makes you feel isolated.’

‘I know.’

‘If we have to pretend to each other like we pretend to the rest of the world, then we might as well not bother with the effort friendship takes.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve been an unreasonable bitch.’

‘Yes, you have.’

‘I haven’t been here for you at all.’

‘No, you haven’t.’

‘Are you okay?’ she asked.

I hoisted myself under the duvet, still facing her so we could natter into the night, resuming the position of all our childhood sleepovers.

‘I think I will be,’ I said. ‘Mum and I might have turned a corner, which I hope will make everything easier. I think now Max is out of my life for good, I’m realizing that being in love with someone who was so clearly dangerous was a distraction from the actual tragedy in my life.’

‘Which is?’

‘Saying goodbye to Dad.’

She reached her hand out to mine. ‘Do you think you really loved Max?’

‘Yes, I really did,’ I said. ‘I don’t know if he loved me. I think he thought he did. But it’s like he imagined me – I provided him with a feeling that he enjoyed. But he couldn’t quite see the actual outline of me. I don’t know if it counts as love if it was genuinely felt on my side but imagined on his.’

‘But –’ She stopped herself.

‘Go on,’ I said.

‘Well, whenever you’ve described him to me, it sounds like you’re imagining him a bit as well. He sounds sexy and interesting. But other than that, he seems pretty unfeeling and self-obsessed.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I think I have to accept some responsibility with what happened. I wonder how much I really wanted to actually get to know the real him, and how much I wanted a storybook hero.’

‘What happened wasn’t your fault.’

‘But I think you might be right, I think I’ve created a version of him too. Or maybe that’s all love is. So much is how we perceive someone and the memories we have of them, rather than the facts of who they are. Maybe instead of saying I love you we should say I imagine you.’

She wriggled down into the bed and pulled the duvet up to her neck. ‘Do you think we’d ever be friends if we met now?’

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘Me neither.’

‘Sort of magic, isn’t it? To know that we could meet the most exciting person in the world, but they’d never be able to recreate the history you and I have. What a unique superpower we have over each other.’

‘It is,’ she said, turning off her bedside light.

‘Is that how you feel about Mark?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know,’ she said, turning her head on the pillow to face me. ‘I don’t know what I feel about Mark at the moment. It’s like we just share a house and a schedule. Maybe that’s having kids. But then again, it’s never been some big romantic love story. That’s not who we are.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I don’t think I need the sort of passion other people need. Do you remember how he asked me to move in with him?’

‘Yeah, he sent an email to your work address with the subject heading “Next Steps”. I think about it at least once a week.’ We both laughed into our pillowcases.

‘I know he can be a bit clueless, but he’s a good dad,’ she said. ‘And he’s always got my back.’

‘You two are so solidly on the same team.’

‘We are,’ she said, closing her eyes.

I turned off my bedside lamp. ‘Sounds pretty romantic to me.’

‘It is,’ she said quietly, before falling almost instantly asleep.

I sent Mark a text.

‘Kat’s with me. She is well and fine and all is good. Call me if you want to talk x’

We slept in the next morning. I awoke, dry-mouthed and nauseous from spirits that left a sticky ring-mark in my head, to a text from Mark that I read aloud to Katherine: ‘Thank you for letting me know. Please tell her there is no rush to come home. I’ve got it covered – and I can take a day off work next week and look after the kids. She deserves a break. Mark x’

We celebrated her first hangover in nearly four years by behaving like we did every weekend afternoon of our early to mid-twenties. We put on tracksuits, I made us toad-in-the-hole with peas and mash, we heaved the duvet on to my sofa and watched three musicals back to back. After the credits of West Side Story, her third helping of mash, two glasses of red wine and a bath, she left at ten p.m. to catch the train back to Surrey. She hugged me, thanked me, told me she loved me and that she’d call me the following week.

I went to the kitchen and filled the sink with water, soap and washing-up. I tied my hair in a ponytail and switched on the radio to the soothing classical Saturday-night show with the radio DJ I liked. An operatic piece reached its denouement with settling strings and a soaring male tenor. There was a brief silence. ‘That was from the little-known cantata “The Spectre’s Bride”,’ she said – the voice I’d been listening to since the year-seven school run. ‘And it’s a reminder to all us ladies that sometimes when your ex-boyfriend gets back in touch, really, he’s just trying to take you down with him to the grave. I think we’ve all been there, haven’t we!’ She chuckled to herself. ‘Just a little joke there for the hard-core Dvo?ák fans. And now – for something a bit more mellow. A seasonally appropriate number from Vivaldi’s … Four Seasons.’ I snapped the rubber washing-up gloves over my hands and sank them into the hot water, contemplating which station she’d end up at next. Where do you go after a late-night classical music show? The shipping forecast? And where would I be listening to it? This flat? A family home? A retirement bungalow?

I heard a knock on the door and knew that Katherine had realized in the hallway that she’d left something.

‘Come in!’ I shouted down the corridor. ‘Door’s open, Kat, sorry. Just doing the washing-up.’ I heard footsteps approach.

‘Where are my packages?’

I turned around to see Angelo, unusually fully dressed in a T-shirt and jeans. I stood with my back against the sink.

‘You can’t barge into my flat.’

‘Where are my packages?’ He stood in the doorway; his face and voice were calm and still.

‘I don’t have your packages.’

‘Yes, you do,’ he said, walking towards me, stopping about a metre away by the cooker. ‘I see the delivery man today out of the window and I run down the road and ask him where he puts the packages for Angelo Ferretti and he say, “I leave them with your wife on the first floor.”’

I quickly spun through a choice selection of excuses, but I could find nothing. I had not thought of an alibi. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said breezily, using my elbow to brush my fringe out of my face while my hands were still in washing-up gloves.

‘WHERE ARE MY PACKAGES?’ he shouted.

‘Angelo, just get out of my flat and I will leave them by your door. I will leave them there right away.’