“Well, it’s that or carry on beating yourself up about it.”

“I think,” she said after a moment, “I’ll carry on beating myself up about it.”

“Fair enough.”

They drove on for a while, the motorway sliding past interminably. And Rosaline, who was nothing if not true to her word, carried on her beating herself up. Now she was out of immediate danger—and was it okay to call it “danger”? It had been scary and uncomfortable, but it wasn’t like she’d been storming the beaches at Normandy.

In any case, now she was out of whatever she’d been in, she had plenty of space to catalogue her regrets. To which she could now add having wasted the best part of two months dating a well-spoken wanker who’d clearly never seen her as a person at all. Just a university dropout whose insecurities he could leverage into a threeway. Especially when there was a guy right in front of her who’d twice dropped everything to bail her out of a bad situation.

“There’s services up ahead.” Harry nodded towards the big blue sign. “Mind if we stop for a coffee?”

“Oh God. This has been a four-hour round-trip for you, hasn’t it?”

“Yeah, and I thought it’d be a bit awkward to take a piss at Alain’s.”

“Let’s take a break.”

They pulled into a car park sparsely dotted with late-night travellers and made their way beneath the triangular glass awning and into the incongruous brightness of the Welcome Break.

Harry glanced around at the variety of fast-food concessions. “Reckon I’ll go Burger King. You always know what you’re getting with Burger King. There’s a Smith’s down that way if you want to get a book.”

“Why would I want a book?”

“I dunno. Just thought you might want a book.”

“What? You think I’d make you drive all the way out to the Cotswolds to rescue me from my atrocious romantic choices and then ignore you in favour of Marian Keyes?”

“It’s up to you, mate. I mean, I’ll be honest, if what I wanted was a chat, there’d be easier ways to get it than driving to the Cotswolds. I came to get you ’cos you needed got. You don’t owe me nothing.”

“I am grateful, though.”

“Yeah, I know. You don’t have to prove it. Fancy a Whopper?”

She did, in fact, fancy a Whopper. She really fancied a Whopper. “Oh God yes. Not only did Alain try to make me fuck his ex-girlfriend, he tried to make me do it on savoury macaron and pea salad.”

“Now that’s evil.”

They Whoppered up, courtesy of a stoned teenager, and then claimed a space in the mostly empty seating area, on either side of a table that was trying hard to pretend it was made of wood.

“I always liked these places as a kid,” remarked Harry. “They felt sorta magic.”

This would never have occurred to Rosaline, but it did make sense in a way. “They do have a . . . detached-from-space-and-time quality.”

“Yeah, and sometimes they’d have an arcade or one of them vibrating massage chairs. We used to fight like cats and dogs over ’em. Dunno why, though, ’cos they was shit.”

“I’ll remember that if I’m in the vicinity of a vibrating massage chair.”

“So . . .” Harry drew a line of ketchup with a fry he didn’t seem interested in eating. “Thought you might want to know I went to the doctor’s the other day. Apparently I’ve got an anxiety thing . . . like you said. And they’re trying me out on some pills and I’m on a waiting list for phone therapy. You know, like over the phone. Not, like, with a phone.”

Rosaline glanced up from her burger, trying not to look as shocked as she felt. “You went to the doctor’s?”

“Yeah. Seemed I probably should to be honest. I know I bit your head off, but then I thought, Well, Rosaline’s pretty smart. Probably knows what she’s talking about.”

“You have way overestimated my competence.”

“Don’t be daft, mate. I’m just saying you’re worth listening to. And well, you was right. Turns out I’m a mental.”

“I don’t think,” she said, “that’s the technical term.”

“You don’t get to do that no more. As a mental, I get to decide what to call myself.”

“And ‘person with an anxiety disorder’ doesn’t strike you as more appropriate?”

He flashed her one of his sly smiles. “Bit of a mouthful, init?”

“Okay.But for the record, I want you to know that I don’t think of you as mental.”

“Thanks, mate.” He was still playing with the same fry. “It’s weird, though. Like, you know, disorienting. ’Cos it’s like a lot of stuff that you thought was just how it was . . . isn’t how it is or doesn’t have to be. And that does my head in.”

“I think . . . the . . . doing your head in is part of the process.”

“Maybe. But right now I’ve gone from Does everyone think I’m a dick; I hope everyone doesn’t think I’m a dick to Does everyone think I’m a dick or do I only think everyone thinks I’m a dick ’cos I’m a mental or am I a dick. And I’m not sure that’s helping.”

Rosaline rescued the disintegrating fry and tossed it into their designated rubbish bag. “It’ll get easier as you get used to it. And the pills might take the edge off, and therapy can give you new strategies for dealing with this kind of thing.”

“Yeah, and I do feel better, actually. I mean”—he shrugged—“I thought I was going to get laughed out of the doctor’s office, but she was really good about it. Said it was a common thing. Lots of options. Nothing to worry about. Which was a bit of a weird thing to say to someone what you’ve diagnosed with anxiety.”

Despite being in a motorway service station after a disastrously failed threesome, Rosaline smiled. “I’m honestly glad you’re getting help with this. I know how hard it is. After all, I’m the last person who should be lecturing other people on confronting their mental health issues.”

“’Cos of your parents?”

“Basically.” Now it was her turn to pick at her food, folding a stray piece of lettuce into a weird mayonnaisey parcel. “It feels so unbearably middle-class. You know, Woe is me, my life is fine, but I’m sad because Daddy didn’t buy me a pony.”