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An hour later, she’d finished my nails. They were perfect – French-polished, neat, expensive-looking. Completely wrong for this room.

‘I love them,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’ It was true: I couldn’t stop admiring them.

‘I’d normally tell you to post and tag me,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘But you’re off the grid.’

‘When I’m back,’ I said. ‘I promise.’

‘You know, you should set up a fake account,’ she said, beginning to pack up her equipment. ‘Just to keep tabs on your whole disappearing act. Make it a dog or something daft.’

I raised an eyebrow. ‘Do you have a fake account, Claire?’

She looked at me like I was slow. ‘Eh. Have you met my mother? She’s the nosiest cunt that’s ever lived. I had no choice but to inherit some of that.’

I laughed. ‘I suppose I do have a business phone,’ I said, suddenly remembering the burner still buried in my bag. ‘No one knows about it.’

Claire’s face lit up. ‘Well, set it up. What are you fuckin’ waiting for? Have a wee snoop,’ she said, already buzzing. ‘Text me when you do. We’ll dissect all the drama together!’

‘I’ll think about it,’ I said, more cautiously now, feeling my stomach churn at it all.

She stood and snapped her case shut. ‘Right. I’d better go before my mum’s arse starts making buttons because I’m up here getting the gossip before her.’

I went to speak, but Claire raised her hands. ‘Don’t worry, she gets told nothing. I know her. You couldn’t tell her the time without it becoming a public service announcement.’

I laughed. Sharon to a tee.

‘Thank you,’ I said, admiring my nails one more time. ‘It was really nice to see you. I’ll text you.’

‘You better,’ she said, immediately delving into her bag and handing me her business card. ‘I’m a good person to know. And don’t beat yourself up over Rupert – he’s the bawbag here. Seriously.’

I smiled back, but hearing his name punched me clean in the chest.

I waved her off from the top of the stairs, then went back to my room, pulled out my other phone and switched it on. Not even a you OK? message from Adam. But then, why would there be? I downloaded Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. Made fake accounts with cute dog photos I found on Google. Then I clicked onto my own page and spent the rest of the night wrapped in blankets, watching video after video of my perfect life with Rupert – from my musty teenage bedroom in my parents’ council house.

Chapter Ten

The weekend passed, and I managed to stay out of everyone’s way, completely refusing – point-blank, despite my mum’s best bullying efforts – to get up, get dressed, or function like a human being.

From downstairs, I could hear Mum worrying about me to my dad through the walls. And as much as I didn’t want to stress her out even more, I also knew I physically wasn’t capable of moving. Everything had hit me like a sack of spuds straight to the face – Rupert, Penelope, the way whatever it was between them had unfolded so publicly, for everyone, everywhere, all at once. It was too much.

So instead, I sat in my tiny room in my mum’s snowman pyjamas – which I was fairly certain were the exact pair she’d bought me from Primark when I was fifteen – and scrutinised social media. I think I watched every single video uploaded by the hundreds of thousands of people posting about my whereabouts. Every theory. Every whisper. Every wildly confident stranger who was absolutely convinced they knew where I was. I watched people break down in tears for me as they rewatched the live, wanting to start a witch hunt on Rupey. But others commented on how glad they were that he’d found ‘something real’, comparing me to a robot and pointing out how unrealistic a trad wife actually is. I spent hours watching, then rewatching the actual live video, wondering how I could have been so fucking clueless to expect anything more from them.

Sometimes I laughed at the memes or edits to dramatic music. Proper laughed – the kind that surprises you, then immediately makes you feel a bit sick. Then I’d cry, realising the full extent of everything I’d just walked away from.

TikTokers cooked up increasingly ridiculous scenarios about where I could be. Some thought Rupert had murdered me. Others were convinced he’d trafficked me. A worrying number believed I was being kept locked in one of the many rooms of the house, like a Victorian ghost but with Wi-Fi and expensive skincare products. Honestly, at that point, that last option didn’t sound much worse than reality. At least that kind of dungeon would come with a four-poster bed, Egyptian cotton sheets and a fluffy carpet.

I heard a knock at my door, then Dad popped his head round it – no doubt dispatched by Mum to check whether I was still alive.

‘You OK, pal?’ he asked.

I nodded. ‘Just exhausted.’ I turned over in bed, immediately regretting it as my nose scraped the cold wall.

‘I’m going up to the loft to get the Christmas tree out, if you want to help?’ he said.

Christmas could fuck right off, I thought. ‘No, thank you,’ I muttered instead, remembering my manners.

But I could already hear the sound of his heavy breath as my dad came in anyway and perched carefully on the edge of my bed.

‘I remember when you were wee,’ he said, ‘how much you loved Christmas. We had that countdown to Santa – the wee cardboard cut-out you made at school. Every morning, you’d race downstairs to turn the numbers over. You were buzzing, watching the time get closer.’