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able to say the words ‘my sister’ without the stab of bitter distaste that accompanies them at the moment. This thought makes me dart off to grab a bunch of white roses from a display. I pay for them separately, with my cashback money. I look apologetically at the man behind me in the queue, wondering whether technically I should have rejoined it at the back before making a second purchase. He is a jumpy-looking man in his forties, and he nods and says ‘nice flowers’ in an Antipodean accent. I smile my thanks and try to shrug off the sudden feeling that I have met him before. This is London: of course I haven’t.
    Once in Olivia’s life she said sorry to me. Soon afterwards we settled back into our habitual disdain for one another. She got over her misdeed conveniently quickly. It was the only time she did something concrete to me, something everyone knew about, something I could point to and say: ‘You did that.’ Yet if I were to mention it now, she would laugh at me.
    Her street is different from the way it was last time I was here. It goes straight off Long Acre, and it is now achingly hip. There is an enormous vintage clothes emporium, a yoga centre, an entrance to a new courtyard full of upmarket shops. I walk down to the end and eye up the pub there. It looks friendly. The house next to it has millions of geraniums in window boxes, with creepers trailing down between them. A quick shot of vodka would give me courage.
    I do not do it, of course, much as I would like to be that sort of woman. I walk back up to Olivia’s mansion block, the clear evening sun suddenly cold on my cheeks. The outside of the building has been cleaned up since I was last here, and it is glowing, redbrick and classic. She bought this place shrewdly, when she got her first job, at a time when London was on the cusp of spectacular unaffordability.
    Birds fly overhead with a sudden cry. A man is walking towards me, and I look at him desperately, as if he might save me from having to press the buzzer. He walks past slowly on the other side of the road, talking into a phone.
    ‘Yeah, sure we could,’ he says, ‘but you’ll have to manage Goddard’s reaction, mate. I’m taking no responsibility.’
    I want to ask who Goddard is and what his reaction will be like, but I press the buzzer instead, and the door clicks open without a word from the intercom.
    She waits for me on the landing. The carpet has been replaced since I was last here, but the walls are still grubby.
    I take a deep breath.
    ‘Olivia!’ I gush, taking care not to notice the disdain in her flinty eyes. ‘It’s lovely to see you!’ I walk towards her for a hug, then retract it when I feel the force of her frost. ‘Thank you so much for having me. How are you? You look great. Here, I bought you some stuff. Flowers, and some contributions to the house.’
    ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Of course you did. Thanks.’
    She runs her fingers through her hair, which is bottle-black and shorter than I have seen it for a long time. It suits her short: she has had it cut in a gamine style that makes her look young and French, an unforgiving style that few could carry off.
    Inside, this is a small dwelling but a beautiful one, with windows at the front that flood every part of the sitting room and main bedroom with light for much of the day. The kitchen, bathroom and small bedroom are gloomy in comparison, but I notice that she has now strung fairy lights everywhere to counter the darkness in characteristic aggressively kooky fashion.
    She dumps the shopping bag in the murky kitchen without looking at it, and I follow her into the sitting room and watch her throw herself down into the battered leather armchair that has been a part of this room for as long as she has lived here, though now it is covered in purple and silver cushions. I take my place on the cream sofa, and aim a fake and desperate smile in her direction.
    ‘You’re here,’ she says, fiddling with one of her