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Theo turned to me, whispering in my ear, his breath disconcertingly warm on my neck.

‘Good luck.’

I nodded a thanks. My mouth felt so dry that I wasn’t sure whether I’d be able to speak, full stop. I looked around the circle, taking in the other two couples properly for the first time. Would they be as articulate as Paul and Harmony? Or was this as new to them as it was to me? At least, presumably, they had the advantage of actually being a couple. Oh, and of having knowingly signed up for this thing.

I cleared my throat.Here goes nothing, I thought.

‘I’m Scarlett,’ I said, wondering whether I could leave it at that. Melissa gave me an encouraging nod. Guess not. ‘I’m an author. I write psychological thrillers. And I’m here because my agent booked me on the couples retreat by mistake. We thought it was a writers’ retreat,’ I said, laughing lightly.

Thankfully the others joined in, except Harmony, who furrowed her brow in confusion.

‘You said “we”?’ said Melissa. ‘What’s the nature of your relationship with Theo?’

God, this was awful. I couldn’t even get what we’doncebeen straight in my head, let alone what I felt about him now. Which was nothing. Obviously.

‘We’re writing partners,’ I said. ‘Or at least we were. We wrote one novel together and then we . . .’ I faltered. Whatever I said, Melissa was going to push me on it, so I had to be careful. ‘We went our separate ways.’

That was one way of putting it. I could see Theo rubbing his jaw in my peripheral vision.‘Tell me more,’ said Melissa. ‘How long ago was that?’

‘Six years,’ I said. ‘And we haven’t really spoken since then.’

Melissa looked surprised. ‘So why now?’

‘As I said, our agent forced us to come,’ I said, deciding to blame Carla because I felt extremely fucked off with her right about now. ‘She thinks it will help us write together again.’

Melissa nodded and did some umming and aahing as she mysteriously wrote some notes.

‘Thank you, Scarlett, that’s a very good start.’

Phew, I could relax for a second.

‘One more question, though,’ said Melissa.

Or maybe not.

‘What would you like to be different about Theo?’ she asked.

I couldn’t even look at him, never mind work out what I wanted to change about him. I mean, nothing. Everything. I didn’t know.

‘I suppose if we’re going to write a book together, I’d like us to be on friendly terms again,’ I reluctantly imparted, not sure if I really meant that or not, but I had to say something, didn’t I?

And then I instantly wished I’d thought of something else because Melissa was on it like a dog with a bone. ‘Ah, so you had a solid friendship once and then something went wrong and now you haven’t spoken for six years but you have to write a book together and it would be a much smoother process if you were friends again?’

‘Basically,’ I mumbled, hating that my cheeks were growing hotter by the second. ‘Can we move on?’

I was literally squirming here, couldn’t she see this was all too much? I hadn’t imagined therapy to be this full-on.Wasn’t it supposed to be all gentle questions and interminable silences?

‘Theo, let’s hear from you. How do you feel about what Scarlett just told us?’

Ha, now it was his turn. Let’s see how he fared. I waited for him to answer but silence hung over the group like a storm cloud and it went on. And on. I flipped my eyes to the right, hoping to give him the signal that he was going to have to speak, it was only fair. Why wasn’t he talking?!

‘Theo?’ prompted Melissa.

He sat forward in his seat, hanging his head. A lock of dark hair fell over his eyes. ‘Sorry, this is really not what I . . . this is really quite difficult . . .’

For a second I felt a shot of something like sympathy. He’d told me once that expressing himself in writing was the only way he’d got through his teenage years. He found it much harder to actually talk about emotional stuff, he’d said, and I’d told him that I felt the same, but that perhaps we dealt with it in different ways; while Theo kept everyone at a distance, I focused on fixing everybody else’s problems instead. I didn’t know which approach was healthier, but it was what it was. Except here was Melissa talking about it being possible for things to change, which honestly, I’d sort of never considered.

‘How would you like your relationship with Scarlett to be different?’ asked Melissa, going for the jugular.