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‘Cute pinafore,’ said my other best friend, Alexa, standing up to hug me, too.

We’d met a bit later, when the two of us had worked on reception at a shabby yet hellishly over-priced hotel in the West End the summer before university. Like me, it had taken her a while to work out what she wanted to do with her life, but she’d got there in the end and was finally following her dream of becoming a doctor, although the training was much more stressful than she’d imagined. I clocked the bags under her eyes, the way her jeans and jumper looked a little too big for her, suddenly. Was she eating properly? I gave her an extra long hug, making a mental note to check in with her later.

‘How was the meeting with your agent?’ asked Petra, who was in the midst of IVF hell and therefore had recently been subjected to watching us chug wine while she sipped on sparkling mineral water. To be fair, she didn’t appear to resent us for it – I supposed the end goal would be worth it, wouldn’t it?

‘Great,’ I lied. ‘I’ve actually agreed to write another book with Theo Winters.’

I clocked Petra and Dan giving each other a look.

‘Blimey,’ said Alexa, pouring me a glass of Pinot Grigio. ‘I thought it all went tits up with you two once the book was done? And that you never wanted to see him again?’

I shrugged, playing it down. I hadn’t told her, or anyone else, the whole story, so she wouldn’t understand the full enormity of what I’d agreed to do, anyway. And I never wanted my friends to worry about me. Sometimes I imagined what it might be like to tell them how I was really feeling;how underneath this cool, calm exterior I was sometimes an anxiety-fuelled, insecure wreck. But that was where it always ended: in a thought. And I never quite managed to vocalise what was in my head.

‘It’ll be fine,’ I assured them. ‘Once we’ve plotted out the story, we won’t need to spend that much physical time together, anyway.’

Although the thought of having to see him atallstill hadn’t properly sunk in. I picked up a menu, glanced at it and threw it back down on the table. For some reason I’d lost my appetite.

Petra frowned at me. ‘Are you sure that’s what you want, Scar? Wasn’t he always lording it around? Taking all the glory at your book signing events?’

I laughed it off. The publicity trail forLittle Boy Losthad been challenging, to say the least. Because it had become a surprise hit, our publishers at the time, Rogers & Richardson, had sprung into action, organising signings galore and appearances at festivals and radio interviews all over the place. We’d had to pretend to be a team for the time it took to get through our event and then we’d gone our separate ways, not speaking or messaging each other until our presence was required at the next one. It had been exhausting.

‘Talking of authors, I heard Jackson on the radio this morning,’ said Dan, slinging his arm around Petra, who curled into him in the comfortable, cat-like way people did when they’d been happily married for years.

I recoiled slightly at the sound of my ex’s name.

‘I heard that, too. He was a bit full of himself towards the end of the interview, wasn’t he?’ said Alexa. ‘I suppose it’s because he writes “literary fiction”.’

‘He was always very supportive of my writing,’ I insisted, still feeling the need to defend him.

Dan snorted.

‘He was!’ I said.

‘Even though he told you commercial fiction was beneath him?’ mused Alexa.

We’d been similar in so many ways, but at the end of the day, Jackson had been longlisted for literary prizes and I wrote books you could buy in supermarkets. But then I sold more copies than him, which to give him his due, never bothered him. He’d rather have prizes than a big pay cheque, he’d told me, which I sort of understood, but then he didn’t need the money like I did.

‘Is he still sleeping with that teenager?’ asked Petra, her nose wrinkled in disgust.

‘She’s twenty-two,’ I said, referring to the agent’s assistant Jackson was now dating.

‘Same thing,’ said Petra.

Alexa patted my knee in sympathy. ‘How are you feeling about it all?’

‘I’m feeling like I’m better off without him,’ I declared, hoping to shut this particular line of conversation downtout de suite.

In the end we’d felt more like friends than lovers, anyway, and instead of any grand romance, our lives together had felt like an extended co-writing session.

‘I must say, you seem much more relaxed without him in your life,’ said Petra.

Clearly my attempts to appear stress-free and totally fine, even when Jackson and I were literally in the throes of breaking up, had failed dismally. I was going to have to try harder next time I was upset about something. Like now, if I let myself think about my book and its dismal sales figures.

‘Anyway, enough about me. Petra, what’s the latest? Didyou get your test results back?’ I asked, desperate to project the heat onto somebody else.

Also, I knew it helped Petra to share her journey with us and sure enough, she pulled her test results up on her phone, talking me through them in slightly unnecessary detail. Alexa got a phone call and excused herself and Dan went to the bar, so it was just me trying to keep up with her progesterone levels and what that meant for her cycle and whether or not she was ovulating. I would usually have been fully engaged, mainly because I knew how much it meant to her, but today I had this impending feeling of doom about not having a publishing deal and being back to square one and it was pecking away at the back of my mind, so much so that I couldn’t seem to just listen and be in the moment. And I lost focus completely when Petra started talking about the positive effects of giving up meat when you were trying to get pregnant, regaling me with a particularly graphic account of animals being pumped with antibiotics that almost made me turn vegetarian on the spot.

I knew Alexa was having an anxiety attack the second she came back into the bar, clutching her phone tightly in her hand, her usually glowing brown skin looking decidedly grey. I immediately stood up, guiding her down into her seat.