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I took a sip: he’d picked a good one. I wondered whether wine appreciation was something that he now indulged in. Like tennis. And saunas.

‘I’m just going to go and say hi to Claire,’ I said, as Paul started up with the football chat again. Theo nodded at me, a sort of casual no problem. Like anI’ll be here if you need me. I didn’t know whether I was imagining it but suddenly Theo felt like a bit of a wing man after all. The kind of secure base that I’d always tried to be for everyone else. Perhaps getting hot and sweaty in the sauna together had been good for us, despite it feeling mortifying at the time.

Claire was pleased to see me, she said, because Rob was in one of his grumpy moods after she’d persuaded him to go for lunch at one of the beach bars and the bill had come to ninety-five euros. Then to add insult to injury they’d had a one-on-one session with Melissa, something we were all apparently going to have to endure.

‘Was it like those therapy sessions you see on TV dramas, with one person revealing a long-held grudge and the other getting mad and then a huge row breaking out andone person saying they don’t want to do this anymore and storming off?’ I asked, wanting to prepare myself for what was to come and also genuinely intrigued by Melissa’s process. I didn’t know how she did it, but that woman seemed to be able to read people’s minds – she could even read the stuff you’d buried somewhere because you didn’twantit on your mind.

‘Ha. Sort of, yeah,’ said Claire, downing the remains of her drink. ‘It’s my own stupid fault for signing us up to this when my husband is the least therapeutic person on earth.’

I put my hand lightly on her arm. ‘You were trying something different. That’s a good thing, isn’t it?’

Claire sighed. ‘Maybe. Anyway, why are you and Theo suddenly giving each other smouldering looks across the room?’

I took a too-big sip of wine and promptly coughed and spluttered so loudly that the entire room – including Theo – looked over. Great, just what I’d been hoping to achieve. I looked down in a panic to check I hadn’t sprayed red wine all over my white linen mini dress, which somehow I’d managed not to.

Claire was looking at me with amusement.

‘Went down the wrong way,’ I croaked, covering my tracks.

‘Uh-huh,’ said Claire, giving me a knowing look.

‘Smouldering is definitely not an accurate description,’ I pointed out.

‘If you say so,’ said Claire, smirking at me.

Honestly! I mean, I’d looked at him once – or maybe twice – in the last few minutes, but I was simply trying to figure out what had changed between us, that was all. Why it suddenly felt a tiny bit more comfortable than it had done previously and how I could keep it that way.‘I think we’ve both figured out that if we want to write this bloody book, we’re going to have to communicate with each other,’ I said, trying to make sense of it as I went along.

‘How successful was the first novel you wrote together, exactly?’ asked Claire. ‘I looked you up on Amazon, and you’ve got, like, 40,000 reviews.’

‘I know,’ I said wistfully. ‘Did you happen to notice the four hundred or so I’ve got for my second book? I mean, until I became an author I’d literally never noticed how many reviews any book had anywhere, nor did I care, nor did I read any. And yet now here I am obsessed with them.’

‘Sounds like a whole load of pressure you don’t need,’ said Claire.

Paul cackled loudly and I was forced to look in their direction again. Had Theo said something funny? I guessed so, since they were now both bent double with laughter. I smiled to myself. It was lovely to see Theo so happy. Perhaps the French Riviera was rubbing off on him, too.

‘And what, did you win a prize or something?’ asked Claire.

‘No, our books are too commercial for that. We hit number two onThe Sunday Timesbestseller list, though,’ I said.

‘You didn’t!’ said an impressed Claire.

I supposed it was quite an accolade. Perhaps I should throw it into conversation more often, although it had always been tinged with regret about Theo, so I’d tended to avoid mentioning it altogether.

‘And we were on theNew York Timesbestseller list for six weeks,’ I added.

‘Fucking hell,’ she said. ‘The two of you are actually proper writers, aren’t you?’

I looked over at Theo and smiled despite myself. Wewere. I was. And I had to remind myself of that when things weren’t going so well career-wise because no matter what happened going forward, there were two and a half books out in the world that I’d written. And I’d never have thought that possible when I was scrabbling to find time to do my homework as a teenager because there was so much housework to do and my only escape had been getting into bed at the end of the evening, exhausted, and longing to lose myself in a book.

‘So are you like famous, then, or what?’ asked Claire.

I laughed. ‘Well, haveyouheard of us?’

‘That doesn’t mean anything, I’m not a big reader and I’m also very unobservant. Once I walked straight past Kate Winslet in the street and had no idea until I noticed Rob was hyperventilating next to me and I asked him what was wrong.’

Rob, who had just joined us confirmed the story.

‘She’s useless at celebrity spotting,’ he said.