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I take my phone out and hover over Nathan’s number. Despite everything, I just need to speak to someone who knows me, really knows me.

I hit dial with my thumb, close my eyes and wait. It’s hardly one full ring until Nathan picks up.

‘Sylvie?’ Nathan’s voice is infused with relief before he even finishes the word.

A long pause. ‘I’m here,’ I say.

We don’t say anything else for a while, unsure of who will lead the way.

Nathan goes first. ‘Where the hell are you?’ he says. ‘You haven’t been in touch at all. You can’t just do that, Sylvie. I was about to call the police.’

‘I didn’t know what to say to you, after that night, that row we had. You said you couldn’t bear the sight of either of us, me or Victoria.’

Nathan lets out a sigh. ‘Shit, sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean it. Did I really say that?’ His lovely Scottish voice.

We’d been playing with Victoria. A Sunday afternoon. Nathan joked that she didn’t look much like him and he raised his eyebrows. Something shifted and it hung in the air. I was careful but my face must have given something away; a tiny flinch. That’s the trouble when you get close to people, let them really get to know you. They can read even the smallest thing.

Nathan had recoiled, he was getting himself up from sitting on the floor.

‘Sylvie? What’s going on?’ His voice was filling up with panic, a basement flooding.

I tried to arrange myself. It had come from nowhere. ‘Don’t be daft,’ I said, but my voice sounded strained and thin. I could tell my eyes were flickering, neon signs of guilt.

‘Sylvie?’ Nathan’s voice was more insistent. ‘What the fuck is going on? Are you seeing someone else?’

‘Noooo,’ I said. But it sounded mocking, as if it was the most ridiculous thing in the world.

‘Oh my God. You are, aren’t you?’

I can still picture the look on his face. He staggered backwards as he stood up. It pains me to remember the look on his face.

‘You can’t just run off like that,’ Nathan says now. ‘And not be in touch. Where are you?’ His voice is wary. ‘Are you with him?’

‘God, no! Don’t think that. I’m at my mum’s. She left me the house when she died. We obviously needed some time apart and I thought it would be as good a chance as any to sort the place out.’

‘You never told me that, either.’ I can tell he’s shaking his head. ‘You never said she left you the house.’

‘I was just getting used to it myself,’ I say. ‘You know things were weird with me and her. And then things got weird with us and I had nowhere else to go.’

‘How’ve you been? And Victoria?’

‘You know… You?’

‘Shit,’ Nathan says. ‘I haven’t been able to sleep. I took some time off and I went back to my mum and dad’s too. Cool off, you know. To think. I thought you’d be here when I got back.’

‘And did you?’ I say. ‘Think?’

‘A bit.’

‘Did you tell your parents? Do they hate me now?’

‘I didn’t tell them, no. I just said we needed a bit of time apart.’

‘Right.’

‘What’s his name?’ Nathan says.

After a long pause, I say, ‘It’s Sean. His name is Sean.’ It feels like the right thing to do. The truth would be worse. That I can’t really remember his name.

Nathan had been away for work. Singapore. I was annoyed with him for travelling again and went to the pub with people from work. I didn’t usually do that. He’d called me earlier in the day, saying the conference had gone well, that he was tired. I could hear music, laughing, glasses clinking in the background.

He said he was tired and it was stressful, a bit boring too, he wished he was at home. But I could detect a note in his voice that this wasn’t really true; he just wished it was.

I didn’t usually drink, but that day I just couldn’t face another Friday night at home on my own.

It was a good night. One of those unplanned ones that just takes on a life of its own. One drink turned into five and ten and then who knows how many. We didn’t bother eating anything; giddiness kicked in. Before I knew it, Beth and I were dancing in a nightclub in the centre of Glasgow.

The dance-floor lights revealed his face gradually, like a gameshow puzzle. The memory is strobe-lit even now. It judders and pieces are missing; some have been edited in.

I stepped off the dance floor. I needed everything to stop moving. I knew he’d come over. Every time I looked across, he was staring at me, bottle tipped to his mouth.

‘What’s your name?’ he shouted in my ear, the hairs on the back of my neck standing up.

I thought for a moment then I let myself get swept up. ‘Ruby,’ I said. I wanted to be someone else for the night and it wasn’t hard to get into character. I was a writer, born in Manchester.

The room spun back at his flat, the edges were blurred. His bed sheets were black and there was a Mark Rothko print on the wall. When he was over me I kept seeing Nathan’s face, then his again.

My body tightens even now when I remember snatches of the evening. A sharp jab of embarrassment, and something else too.

I crept out in the early morning, into my own clothes, back into my own bed and into my own life. It was easy in a way to rationalise it. Being that drunk, I hadn’t been myself.

‘I want to get past this, Sylv,’ Nathan says, pulling me back out of that night once again.

‘But what if she isn’t…? Do you want to do a test to see if she’s yours?’

‘Is that what you want?’ he says. ‘If we say that she’s mine, she can be. Like she was before.’

And I wonder if he’s right. I think I want him to be.

‘Are you alright, Sylvie? You sound really strange. I’ll come and see you,’ he says.

‘No. I’ll be home. We’ll talk then. I’m going to come home. I’ll come tomorrow.’ Relief rushes through me at just the thought.

He exhales into the receiver. ‘Thank God. Phone me or text me. I’ll come and get you at the station.’