The last train east was already at the platform when we came down the stairs at London Bridge, and we both saw the doors and both slowed, which is how you miss a thing on purpose without signing anything.

I am Iris. I am thirty. I had been doing the decent version of the evening: one drink, a walk, the kind of goodbye you can tell a boyfriend about without editing. Ellis is thirty-four, a friend of a friend who had become, over a winter, the person I text when the decent version feels like a coat two sizes too small.…