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‘I was looking forward to reconnecting and having a nice evening. Like always,’ she says. Fake memories. She’s just like our mother. Not once have we had a ‘nice evening’ together that I can remember. Not since we were kids anyway.

‘I didn’t ask you to.’

‘But I thought maybe you’d…’ She trails off. This should be interesting. ‘I was hoping…’ I can clearly see her choking on the next word. ‘That you’d hear me out so that I can own my own truth and move on.’

Flaming cheek. Me, Me, Me. I’m going to move her extreme narcissism one further up the list and give it top priority.

‘It’s spicy chicken,’ she says.

‘I’m vegan now.’ At least I’m almost thinking about considering it.

‘Are you? But you said veganism was for smug do-gooders, and the food’s all rubbery and over-priced, when I did a whole TikTok thing on it. Well, never mind, there’s salad.’

Honestly, is that all people think we potential vegans can eat? Leaves? And I hardly think a thirty-second video of her dancing in the kitchen in her pyjamas while she made a snack out of grilled tofu was earth-shatteringly informative.

‘Enjoy your meal,’ I say stiffly, turning to go. If she thinks one delicious chilli chicken and a to-die-for cheesecake will make up for ruining my career, she is sadly mistaken.

‘But we need to talk about what happened,’ she calls out, with her wide eyes and dentist advert smile.

All she’ll do is go on and on about how it wasn’t her fault and how that really, if I’ve any sense at all, I should see that it is, in actual fact, all my fault.

‘Yes. We do.’ I make sure to slam my bedroom door loudly. Oh my God, this darkness inside me is borderline embarrassing. It’s like the voice I hear belongs to someone else, not me. It’s like I’m deliberately trying to alienate people and take my anger out on them. The exact opposite of how I used to be.

Maybe Oliver is right. I need to be the better person here. I need to stop drinking the poison.

I catch sight of myself in the mirror. I’m surprised to see my stomach is concave and my hips look sharp. I’ve definitely lost weight over the last couple of weeks. I used to have a sparkle in my eyes but now, they are dull and hollow-looking. My thoughts fly briefly to Dan and how he hasn’t so much as sent a text after that awful day. Neither has Pippa and we were such great friends. Not one word from either of them. My reflection stares back at me. I look gaunt and not so pretty, dead behind the eyes. Bitterness is ageing, I don’t care what anyone says.

I’ll quickly freshen up and then confront Ava over dinner. We can talk through what exactly happened at work like two civilised adults. The emails. The promotion. The shock redundancies. And Dan. But when I step out of the shower a few minutes later, I hear voices and music.

I throw on my mother’s elaborately coloured silk kimono, which is hanging on the back of the bathroom door, to go investigate.

I nearly die when I walk in the kitchen and see Señor Handsome Bugger from the airport sitting opposite my sister, eating my chicken and drinking a glass of my wine. They are laughing their heads off. They both turn to me, smiling.

‘Oh, hi Nelly-Belly. This is…’ But as my sister introduces him, I blank them both, swerve round to retrieve my keys from the plant pot, head out of the door and slam it loudly behind me.

I can barely drive, I’m fuming so much. She hasn’t been in the country for more than five bloody minutes and already she’s got a bloody date? And the cock-faced fucker looks like some sort of supermodel. She’s ruined the big confrontation I’d built myself up to, and now I have to go to sleep starving hungry, dressed in a peacock-blue and burnt-orange kimono.

Within minutes, I’ve reached my office, unscrewed the bottle top on the emergency wine and felt the cool liquid sliding down my throat. It’s like watering a shrivelled-up plant just before it dies and watching it spring back to life. Like those speeded-up scenes from nature programmes on the Serengeti or wherever, when the mudflats get a single drop of rain and suddenly burst into lush green meadows with gazelles leaping about while hippos roll in the water. That’s how my taste buds feel.

Within minutes, the wine bottle is empty and I’m fast asleep on the good sofa.

* * *

I wake up the next day in my office, crumpled and drained but ready for a sturdy day of ignoring my sister and, of course, a day of helping people with real problems. I am not going to have a meltdown today. I need to rise above it. I’m going to have to race home and change so that I can transform from this hideous, wine-soaked husk in a brightly coloured silk kimono into a professional-looking life coach who cares.

Deep breaths.

Deep breaths.

I have some of Nidi’s regular clients booked in today and I am determined to take them a step further towards their goals even if it is the only session they do with me. I will explain that there has been a computer mix-up and if they complain afterwards, I won’t charge for their session.

A momentary flashback of Oliver looking lustfully at my lips pings into my mind accompanied by a flurry of butterflies. And yes, he might have been a little heavy handed with the home truths, but he is perfectly tall, with dark mysterious eyes, unruly dark hair and a sort of commanding presence that adds a sexiness to him. Even if he was sent by the ICF to spy on me.

Snap out of it.

As I haul myself up from the sofa, my phone rings. Without thinking, I answer it before I’ve even checked the caller ID. My determined mood immediately evaporates as I see who it is.

‘How are you and Ava getting along?’ my mother asks, blunt as ever.