Two days previously I had gone to the Ambulance Station to wait for Sam, and Donna had stood by her car chatting to me for a few minutes while he gathered his belongings. ‘Don’t mess him around.’

I turned, not sure if I had heard her correctly.

She had watched as an ambulance was unloaded by the shutters, and then rubbed her nose. ‘He’s all right. For a great lunk. And he really likes you.’

I hadn’t known what to say.

‘He does. He’s been talking about you. And he doesn’t talk about anyone. Don’t tell him I said anything. I just … he’s all right. I just want you to know.’ She had raised her eyebrows at me then, and nodded, as if confirming something to herself.

‘I’ve just realized. You’re not in your dancing-girl outfit,’ said Daphne.

There was a murmur of recognition.

‘Did you get promoted?’

I was dragged from my thoughts. ‘Oh. No. I got fired.’

‘Where are you working now?’

‘Nowhere. Yet.’

‘But your outfit …’

I was wearing my little black dress with the white collar. ‘Oh. This. It’s just a dress.’

‘I thought you were working at a themed bar for secretaries. Or maybe French maids.’

‘Don’t you ever stop, Fred?’

‘You don’t understand. At my age, the phrase “Use it or lose it” takes on a certain urgency. I might only have twenty or so stiffies left in me.’

‘Some of us have never had twenty stiffies in us in the first place.’

We paused to give Fred and Daphne time to stop giggling.

‘And your future? It sounds like it’s all change for you,’ said Marc.

‘Well … I actually got offered another job.’

‘You did?’ There was a little ripple of applause, which made me blush.

‘Oh, I’m not going to take it, but it’s fine. I feel I’ve sort of moved on, just for being offered a job.’

William said: ‘So what was the job?’

‘Just something in New York.’

They all stared at me.

‘You got a job offer in New York?’

‘Yes.’

‘A paid job?’

‘With accommodation,’ I said quietly.

‘And you wouldn’t have to wear that godawful shiny green dress?’

‘I hardly think my outfit was a good enough reason to emigrate.’ I laughed. Nobody else did. ‘Oh, come on,’ I said.

They were all still staring at me. Leanne’s mouth might actually have been hanging open a little.

‘New York New York?’

‘You don’t know the whole story. I can’t go now. I have Lily to sort out.’

‘The daughter of your ex-employer.’ Jake was frowning at me.

‘Well, he was more than my employer. But yes.’

‘Does she have no family of her own, Louisa?’ Daphne leaned forward.

‘It’s complicated.’

They all looked at each other.

Marc put his pad on his lap. ‘How much do you feel you’ve really learned from these sessions, Louisa?’

I had received the package from New York: a bundle of documents, with immigration and health-insurance forms, clipped together with a thick piece of cream notepaper on which Mr Leonard M. Gopnik forwarded me a formal offer to work for his family. I had locked myself into the bathroom to read it, then read it a second time, converted the salary to pounds, sighed for a bit, and promised myself I would not Google the address.

After I’d Googled the address I resisted the brief urge to lie on the floor in a foetal position. Then I got a grip, stood up and flushed the loo (in case Lily wondered what I was doing there), washed my hands (out of habit), and took it all into my bedroom where I stuffed it into the drawer under my bed and told myself I would never look at it again.

That night she had knocked on my bedroom door shortly before midnight.

Can I stay here? I don’t really want to go back to my mum’s.

You can stay as long as you want.

She had lain down on the other side of my bed and curled up in a little ball. I watched her sleep, then pulled the duvet over her.

Will’s daughter needed me. It was as simple as that. And, whatever my sister said, I owed him. Here was a way to feel I hadn’t been completely useless. I could still do something for him.

And that envelope proved I was someone who could get a decent job offer. That was progress. I had friends, a sort of boyfriend, even. This, too, was progress.

I ignored Nathan’s missed calls and deleted his voicemail messages. I would explain it all to him in a day or two. It felt, if not like a plan, then as close to one as I was going to get right now.

Sam was due shortly after I got back on Tuesday. He texted at seven to say he was going to be late. He sent another at a quarter past eight, saying he wasn’t sure what time he would make it. I’d felt flat all day, struggling with the stasis that comes from not having a job to go to, worries about how I was going to pay my bills, and being trapped in an apartment with someone else who similarly had nowhere to go and I was unwilling to leave by herself. At half nine the buzzer went. Sam was at the front door, still in uniform. I let him in and stepped out into the corridor, closing the front door behind me. He emerged from the stairwell and walked towards me, his head down. He was grey with exhaustion and gave off a strange, disturbed energy.