Once she’d thought him the most handsome man in the world, and the knowledge that most women wouldn’t look at him twice only made him more special, as if he was a brilliant artist whose work only she appreciated.

Charlie had come to believe himself an outsider to love. Not that he was incapable of it, or immune to it. Not at all. He was an incurable romantic, as many inveterate cynics often are. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe love was possible because he absolutely did, but rather that he didn’t believe it was possible for him. So he was doomed to live in a permanent state of quiet unfulfilment. And then he met Stefan.

There was something about this girl’s body language, the way she kept darting a look at Leanne, then turning her eyes quickly away, that made her think maybe she was telling the truth. In Leanne’s experience, if people were lying, they tended either to look away the whole time or to fix you with intense eye contact as if daring you to disbelieve them.

Kristen was a plump girl with a wide, doughy face, who always blinked before talking to you as if trying to expel an unwelcome image that had come unbidden into her head.

Suddenly Guy appeared in the doorway. Emma was surprised to see he had his jacket on, a black leather biker-style one he wore with the self-consciousness of a girl in her first pre-teen bra.

Imagine we could see the damage inside ourselves. Imagine it showed through us like contraband on an airport scanner. What would it be like, to walk around the city with it all on view – all the hurts and the betrayals and the things that diminished us; all the crushed dreams and the broken hearts? What would it be like to see the people our lives have made us? The people we are, under our skin. I.

Sarah couldn’t remember when she’d last seen Charlie this happy. It was as if someone had yanked the dial of the dimmer switch round, lighting him up from inside. Normal Charlie was an endearing if reserved mix of cynicism and kindness, warmth and resignation. Now he shone with an emotional energy so exposing you almost wanted to look away, as if you were seeing something you shouldn’t.

My house has one integral living space and I am sitting on the couch facing the TV, while she is perched on a stool at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, my laptop open in front of her. We have adopted these same positions so many times over the years, it’s like we have worn a groove in time. I imagine us suspended here for ever, like tiny figures in a doll’s house.

It’s like those kids who grow up in houses where the parents speak different languages and turn out bilingual. If they’re exposed to something at an early enough age, they absorb it naturally and becomes just something normal.

We’d met at university, where he was studying medicine and I was studying social awkwardness and a catastrophic inability to cope with deadlines.