The sinking bubble of discouragement in Courtney’s guts suddenly shot upwards, and as it rose from stomach to spinal column to brain stem it intensified and metamorphosed into desperation. Could she really do this? Yes. There was no other way. She would have to call him, her biggest mistake, that pinch-faced needle-nosed weasel.

They had gone out for a glorious six months: flowers at work, romantic candlelit dinners, and the best sex she’d ever had. They loved the same 90s grunge rock, laughed at the same campy jokes, and finished one another’s sentences. A match made in heaven, she’d thought. How wrong she was.

He was a bright entrepreneur, and she knew that the sooner he had his big break, the sooner they’d move into that two-storey suburban home with the swimming pool and the white picket fence. She poured the last of her savings into his graphic design company. Under his capable leadership, the company rose in stellar fashion, and so too did their relationship, until the day his firm went public.