My mother-in-law brought thirty-eight friends into my restaurant, ordered the most expensive menu on it, and told them she was paying. Then she started boasting about my husband’s new girlfriend — and I looked across the room at the young woman refilling their water.

Tobias and I separated in the October.

The supplier card money came back through the divorce. The comps did not, and I never tried, because I signed every one of those slips and that was my choice.

Aurelie left that afternoon. She wrote to me in the November and I am not going to repeat the letter, except that she said she had been told I was about to leave him and that the restaurant was going to be his.

Constance has not been through my door since. I have heard from Declan that she tells people I threw her out.

I did not throw her out. I gave her a folder.

She’s good at working — that’s what you keep her for.

She said that in my own private dining room, holding a bottle of my wine against her chest, in front of thirty-eight women who laughed.

She was not wrong. I am good at working.