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We all hung around, with another round of cocktails handed out, much to our delight. Paul still insisted on sticking to mocktails and he was unnecessarily holier-than-thou about it, even though I’d seen him chug enough wine to sink a ship over the last few days. A big round moon was lighting up the courtyard and I savoured the feeling of being outside having drinks in April, of the burst of sweetness coming from the wisteria lining the fence running alongside us and of feeling warm enough to roll up my sleeves despite it being nearly 10 p.m.

‘That was actually much easier than I thought,’ said Claire, making a beeline for me. I was desperate to know how things had gone with Theo but I couldn’t expect Claire to break the confidentiality clause Melissa had quite rightly imposed on us.

‘Yeah, well you didn’t have Paul to contend with. Weweren’t the best match – for a start, we’re probably the two most highly defensive people here,’ I said.

‘Did anything useful come out of it?’ asked Claire.

I took a second to think about it. ‘OK, yeah, it did. A bit.’

In my head, I recounted what he’d said, about how he thought I wanted people to see me. And how this was at odds with the yearning for affection I had underneath all of that bravado. But even if he was right, what was I supposed to do about it? Start spewing out all the stuff that scared me and made me angry and upset me on a daily basis? Nobody would know what had hit them.

‘How did you get on?’ I asked Claire casually.

‘You’re dying to know, aren’t you?’ she said, on to me immediately.

I winced. ‘Was it bad?’

‘You know we’re supposed to keep everything confidential . . .’ said Claire in a mock-scolding voice (or at least I hoped it was ‘mock’).

‘Definitely don’t say anything you don’t feel comfortable with,’ I assured her, playing it cool.

‘You want to know, though. Right?’ teased Claire. Clearly my version of cool was way off the mark.

‘Aaaargh,’ I said. ‘OK, I want to know! But I get that we’re not supposed to share, so . . .’

Claire looked over her shoulder at Theo, who was deep in conversation with Justin. I’d spotted them, too, and wondered if he was giving Justin his mysterious and surely useless romantic advice. I couldn’t, for a second, imagine what words of wisdom he was hoping to impart, given his own relationship history.

‘I can tell you one thing and one thing only,’ said Claire, turning back to me.

My stomach turned. Was this going to make my night orruin it? And what would this ‘making of my night’ even look like? Did I want Theo to like me romantically, was that what my heart was getting at? And if so, was it because I wanted some sort of redemption for what had happened before? To know I could have him if I wanted to? Or was it more to do with the here and now, and how well we’d been getting along recently and – yes – how incredibly gorgeous he looked every single time he set foot outside of his tantalisingly close bedroom.

‘Go on, then, let’s get it over with,’ I said, preparing myself for the worst.

Claire bit her lip and leaned in, whispering into my ear. ‘I think Theo has a thing for you.’

I felt like the ground had opened up and I’d fallen about ten foot into it.

‘He hasn’t,’ I spluttered.

‘He didn’t exactly say as much. We talked about . . . other things, mainly.’

What ‘other things’? I wanted to scream.

‘What makes you think that he likes me, then? Do you mean as a friend?’

‘No!’ said Claire. ‘Not as a friend. And it’s just a feeling I have. But I can’t say any more so please don’t make me. I’m finding it really hard not to spill my guts as it is.’

This was excruciating!

‘Got it,’ I said through gritted teeth. ‘Thank you for telling me that much.’

What I really wanted to say was: pleasedospill your guts. Please tell me every single thing he said, every breath he took, every facial expression he made. Because I didn’t quite trust Claire’s opinion. Not because she wasn’t a good judge of character, because she seemed very astute, but because Theo could turn on the charm whenever he wanted to andmost people fell for it hook, line and sinker. And she had no idea what he’d been like before, how he’d treated me last time. And even though I felt all heady and excitable now at the thought that he might like me in a way that I was desperately trying not to like him, I wasn’t sure how genuine it was from his end. Six years had gone by and he hadn’t once tried to contact me, so he could hardly have been pining for me all this time, could he?

And then of course, as I looked up, the first person whose eye I caught was Theo’s, as if he’d been searching for me. And I felt a bit dizzy immediately, sort of wild and bubbly, and my emotions were not flat like I preferred them to be, but all over the place: I liked him, I didn’t; he wanted me, but then he didn’t. God, I was driving myself mad. Placing my still-full cocktail glass on a nearby table, I told Claire I was getting an early night.

‘I didn’t freak you out, did I?’ she said, laying a hand on my arm, concerned.

‘Course not,’ I reassured her. ‘I’ve got a ton of writing to do, that’s all. We’re sending what we’ve done so far to our agent tomorrow.’