Piper had always intended to move to London for university. But she’d assumed she’d be going home to New Brighton, to her family, every holiday and possibly additional weekends. She’d only been in London for five months when her parents had died. And that had changed everything.

She’d gone home for a while. Just until she’d felt like she could stand without staggering. Could speak without weeping. Could breathe without it escaping through the gaping hole where her heart had been. She’d actually returned to London a little before she was ready. Because she’d been terrified that she’d never be ready and she’d stay at home – with Connie and Holly, who had still been living in New Brighton and working in Liverpool – and never get back to her own life.

Back in London, she threw herself into university, into student life, and tried to forget everything else. If she worked hard enough, if she went out enough, if she drank enough, she didn’t have to think about the fact that her parents were never coming back. Ever.

She lived in Halls off Charlotte Street, which would have been a perfect introduction if the Halls hadn’t been so shitty, but living in the centre of town had been exciting. Her friends all went out a lot, even though no one really had any money. They’d get £1 slices of pizza and cheap beer and either spend their nights in dingy clubs (everyone else) or endlessly walking around London (Piper).

In her second year, she moved into a shared flat with two girls who never spoke to her, but left her passive aggressive Post-it notes about every single thing she did. Her music and TV were too loud. She was taking up too much space in the fridge. She’d left a pan to soak in the sink and they would ‘appreciate it’ if she did her dishes before returning to her room. They’d got the electricity bill – Piper’s rent had been inclusive of utilities – and it was much higher than they’d expected, so could she not charge her phone so much or make fewer cups of tea or just, you know, maybe disappear entirely but carry on paying rent. They hadn’t written that. But Piper had felt it just the same.

In her third year, she’d moved into a shared house with some other uni friends, ones she actually liked, and Matt, who she’d seen around, but didn’t really know. They weren’t super close – it wasn’t the Friends hanging out in each other’s rooms, in and out of each other’s lives, co-dependent friendship she’d dreamed about, but it had been fine. Gradually everyone had moved out and been replaced until she and Matt were the only ones who’d been there from the start. And they were best friends.

Once she’d finished uni, she’d started temping with a company that specialised in the entertainment industry. She hadn’t really known what she wanted to do; all she’d known was that she’d wanted to be in London. And if she was going to temp, she thought she might as well temp in an interesting industry. And she was really good at it. From the very first day she was in demand, moving from one job directly into another.

And she’d enjoyed it. She’d started at Infinite Plays record company, in the Accounts department, basically inputting figures on a spreadsheet. She’d been bored out of her mind, but the people were nice and the office was on the Thames in Hammersmith and she could actually almost just about see the river out of the window.

Then the PA to the Head of Legal & Business Affairs left suddenly and they asked her to cover for her, just until they found someone else, but by the end of the first week, her boss, John, stopped working on the ‘Perfect PA, Central London’ ad and started asking her to stay. So she’d stayed.

And then there was the money. From her parents’ house. From their savings. From their insurance policies. So much money. More money than Piper had really ever dreamed of having. She’d planned to ignore it to begin with. But then she’d bought her flat. For a ridiculous amount of money. She still couldn’t really think about how much it had cost. But everyone said it was an investment, that renting was ‘dead money’ (and then they’d wince when they realised they’d just said the ‘d’ word to someone who’d just lost her parents). Matt had gone on all the viewings with her. And she’d been glad. Because he had great taste and a very low tolerance for bullshit. There’d been times when Piper had known she would have been snowed by the estate agent, but Matt just said no. At one flat, he refused to let Piper even step over the threshold because of the smell of mould emanating from, apparently, everywhere. Piper had almost settled on a studio in a portered building on actual Abbey Road –it was smaller than she’d wanted, but it had a balcony and she felt safe knowing there was security on site – but then Matt had sent her the details of a flat in Stoke Newington belonging to one of his many friends. It wasn’t an area Piper knew or had considered, but the flat was the basement of an adorable end-of-terrace Victorian house and actually had its own private patio garden. Tiny, but still. Piper’s heart had fluttered as she’d looked at the photos and then when she and Matt had gone to view it, she’d known before they were even through the front door. It was perfect. It felt like her. No, more than that. It felt like the person she wanted to be. But she hadn’t wanted to be alone, so she’d asked Matt to stay. And they’d had so much fun together that he just never left.