“Nah. You didn’t bash your head or nothing. Just got a bit of whiplash. Put some peas on it, you’ll be fine. See you at the weekend.”

Alain said some more things after that, but Rosaline wasn’t listening, and she didn’t think Harry was either.

He took her bag and let her in the passenger side of his van. “Mind the toolbox, mate.”

She got herself settled and Harry climbed into the driver’s seat, closing the door behind him with a satisfying air of finality.

They drove along in silence for a while, twisting country roads giving way to the flat grey haze of the M40.

“I,” said Rosaline, curling over her knees, “am a fucking idiot.”

Harry’s eyes flicked briefly to her. “Nah you’re not. You just went out with a dickhead for a bit. Lots of people do.”

“Except this whole time he clearly saw me as some kind of slutty bisexual sex toy, and I don’t know, is that who I am? Is that who I appear to be on television? Is that going to be me forever now?”

“Well . . . no. Like, any of ’em.”

“I mean, you spoke to me that first day. So you must have been thinking something.”

“I thought you was pretty and that you might want a cup of tea. That’s not the same as thinking you’re a slutty bisexual sex-whatsit. And even if I did, I know a lot of slutty birds and they’re all-right people. Terry’s sister, Shirl, she’s had more cock than Colonel Sanders, but she ain’t hurting no one, and when Sam’s fella walked out she was right there for her.”

“Sorry”—Rosaline hugged her knees harder—“are you saying you don’t think I’m a slut or it’s okay if I am?”

“Both. With the baking and the kid, I don’t reckon you’ve got much time for getting yourself some, but if I’m wrong, so what? And as for TV, well it’s just TV, init? I’ve never watched a series of Bake Expectations and come away thinking She’s well up for it. It’s not the show’s . . . what’s the word. Brand.”

She sighed. “I know. It’s always in the back of your mind, though, isn’t it? The whole stereotype. Except it turned out that was exactly what Alain wanted. So that’s fun.”

“Yeah, but that’s on him, not on you.”

“Then why am I the one in your van, feeling shit about myself, while he’s probably banging his drunk ex-girlfriend and complaining about what a complete bitch I am?”

“I hit him quite hard. So it’s more likely he’s sitting on the sofa with peas on his face complaining about what complete bitches we both are.”

For some reason that cheered Rosaline up slightly. “I don’t condone violence, but he did have it coming.”

“It’s what you do. Bloke gets in your face. Won’t get out of it. You have to get him out of it.” A pause as Harry manoeuvred them round a long Eddie Stobart lorry. “So, you want to tell me what happened? You ain’t gotta.”

Rosaline groaned. “It’s fucking embarrassing and a fucking cliché.”

“Wanted you to have a threesome, did he?”

The worst thing about it was how fucking obvious it was. Obvious and sordid. “Yes, he did. With his bicurious ex-girlfriend. Who wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

“Oh, mate. I’m sorry. Like, I’ve got to admit I’ve never worked out why people are so into it.”

“Porn?” suggested Rosaline. “Bragging rights?”

“No, I get that. And I can see how, at first, you’d think it’d be great. ’Cos it’s like having a second helping of pudding. But actually it’s really confusing. I mean, you’ve only got two hands and one dick. Or else they get well into it and you’re like, You know what, shall I just leave you to it?”

Rosaline slanted a slightly curious look at him. “Are you speaking from experience?”

“I don’t spend every Saturday eating pies with Terry.”

“Fuuuck.” She flopped back against her seat. “I still feel like a complete fucking idiot.”

“You’ve got to stop blaming yourself, mate.”

“You know, and this is going to sound unbelievably bad out of context, but I’m starting to think I don’t blame myself. I blame my fucking parents.”

“Have a lot of threesomes, did they?”

“Very funny. No. But they liked Alain. And I knew they would. And why am I twenty-seven, with a kid who knows what ‘sesquipedalian’ means, and still making decisions about my own life based on what I think would please two people who are fundamentally unpleasable?”

He made the same sound that the guy who’d charged her a hundred and something quid to look at her boiler had made when he looked at her boiler. “You might’ve lost me. The way I see it, if they’re your family, either they’ll love you no matter what, or fuck ’em.”

“Yeah, they don’t work like that. They’re more, We’re here for you no matter what you choose, as long as you choose what we want you to. It’s sort of the Model T Ford of emotional support.”

“That sounds like a fuck ’em situation, then.”

“It’s not that easy. For a start, I keep taking their money because if I don’t my house will fall down and my daughter will starve. And I don’t actually want to cut them out of Amelie’s life because they’re her grandparents and they love her. Also, there’s a non-zero chance they might be right and I have been fucking up my life since I was nineteen. For no reason.”

“I never said it was easy,” Harry told her. “Terry and Shirl’s dad’s a proper arsehole. Messed ’em up real bad and they both know it, but every”—he made another of those This’ll cost you noises—“two, three years he’ll show up again and sometimes they’ll tell him to piss off like they should but sometimes they don’t ’cos he’s still their dad and either way they get through it and try to do better next time.”

“Is that why Terry’s such a knobhead?”

“Nah, he wouldn’t want you to give the old man that. He’s a knobhead on his own account.”

She laughed. “So, what? I just write off having latched onto a prick because my parents approved of him as a learning experience?”