‘Is that why you keep putting my toothpaste on my toothbrush for me every night? It’s something you and Garv did?’

‘Wh-at?’ I stuttered.

‘Every night since you’ve got here,’ she said patiently, ‘after you’ve gone to bed, I’ve gone to the bathroom and my toothbrush is waiting, with toothpaste on it. If you’re not doing it, then who is?’

I had to admit it. ‘It is me. I hadn’t realized I was doing it. I can’t believe it.’

‘And it’s something you and Garv did?’

‘Yeah. Whichever one of us went to did first would get the toothbrush ready for the other person.’

‘That’s the sweetest thing I ever heard,’ Emily glowed, then quickly quenched it when she saw my face.

The grief I’d felt when I’d woken up was back. I was carrying the full weight of a lost language and all the rituals that would mean nothing to anyone else, but were part of whatever had bound Garv and me together. And there were loads of them: when he made my dinner and put it on the table, I had to rush into the room and declare, ‘I came as soon as I heard!’ And if I forgot, he’d withhold the nosh and prompt me, ‘Say it. Go on –I came as soon as I heard!’

Trying to explain why that was funny or comforting would be like trying to describe colour to a blind person. Not that I’d ever have to, because now it was all gone. An entire way of life.

Clearly, I was pumping out waves of regret, because Emily urged, ‘It’s OK to say it.’ ‘Say what?’

‘That you miss him. Even I miss him.’ ‘OK,’ I sighed. ‘I miss him.’

But I missed more than him. I missed me. I missed the way it used to be, when I didn’t have to pretend to be anything other than me. Now there were all these people around, and I was tired of having to act. Even with Emily I wasn’t as fully me as I once was with Garv. And it showed up in the smallest of things, like the telly being on too loud. With Garv I’d just roar at him and he’d turn it down, but with Emily I had to keep my mouth shut and burn holes in the lining of my stomach instead.

‘I had a dream,’ I announced. I sounded like Martin Luther King.

‘Tell me,’ Emily said, then thought to add, ‘Marty.’

‘Well, you know the plot already’

‘Is this the Shay Delaney dream?’

‘Yes, and it started with me running after Shay, but he turned into Garv.’ I described the frantic running, the desperate need to catch up with him, the terror as he slipped further and further away, the bereft grief when I understood that he was gone. ‘So, go on,’ I ended. ‘Make me feel better.’

Emily’s very good at that sort of thing.

‘We process things in our dreams that we’re not able to in our waking hours,’ she said. ‘You were married for nine years, of course you feel shite. The end of any relationship is a wrench. I mean, even after I’ve been going with someone for three months, I feel suicidal when it’s over. Unless I ditch them. Then I’m over the moon.’

I was beginning to feel a good deal more normal, then Emily ruined it all by asking, ‘Is there any chance, though, that maybe you and Garv could try again?’

The room seemed to darken.

‘I know he’s had an affair,’ Emily said.

‘Having,’ I corrected. ‘He’s having an affair.’

‘It could be over, for all you know.’

‘I don’t care. The damage is done. I’d never be able to trust him again.’

‘But it could be worked out – other people have done it.’

‘I don’t want to. Since February… I can’t describe it, Emily. It was like… like being locked in a car boot with him.’

‘Jesus!’ she said, startled at my imagery. I was quite startled myself, to be honest. I’m not normally good at that sort of thing.

‘A car boot that was shrinking,’ I added, just to outdo myself.

Emily gasped, her hands to her throat. ‘I can’t breathe!’

‘That’s exactly how I felt,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘Anyway, I’m just having a bad day… Another one,’ I added.

‘Let it go, man,’ a dopey voice interrupted. It was Ethan, leaning against the door frame, clearly enthralled. ‘If it don’t come back, it was never yours. If it comes back, it’s yours to keep.’

‘Out!’ Emily ordered, her arm straight, her finger pointing. ‘We’ve enough armchair philosophers around here.’

As he loped to the door, Emily checked the time again. ‘David has got to be at his desk by now!’

And he was – but he couldn’t really tell her anything. As was his way, he made positive noises. ‘They really loved you!’ But she wanted hard news. A yes or no. Are they in or are they out? And he couldn’t tell her.

‘He’s scared,’ she surmised, hanging up the phone.

‘Why would he be scared?’ I forced joviality.

‘’Cos this town runs on fear. If Hothouse pass, it’ll reflect badly on him and his lousy judgement in backing a loser. Makes him a loser by association.’

Food for thought. I’d always thought of agents as kind of impartial catalysts. Middlemen who brought people together but who remained unaffected by the process. I’d been wrong.

‘And Mort Russell is probably scared that if he buys it, the head of the studio mightn’t like it,’ she continued gloomily. ‘And scared that if he doesn’t buy it, someone else might and make a hit of it. Meanwhile, I’m fucking terrified that no one will buy it. How do you feel, Maggie?’

I checked my anxiety levels. Same as they always were. ‘Scared stiff.’

‘Welcome to Hollywood.’

A ring on the doorbell had us making enquiring faces at each other. Emily nearly broke her neck skidding across the floor, spurred on by visions of Mort Russell standing on her doorstep holding a your-worries-are-over cheque.

But it wasn’t Mort Russell, it was Luis, one of the Goatee Boys. Up until now, they’d only existed for me as a blur of interchangeable facial hair, but at last night’s party they’d come into separate focus. There were indeed only three of them. Ethan: big, meaty and shaven-headed. Curtis: blondy, balding, plumpish, with the least impressive goatee of the lot. It was wispy and flyaway, as though he’d been crawling under a bed and had got a load of fluff stuck to his chin. I found something slightly odd about him, but that might just have been because Ethan had told me that in high school Curtis had been voted pupil ‘Most likely to go postal in a public place with an automatic weapon.’