emptyprojectionmember' was not present in the dictionary

Question

I have recently upgraded my application running Entity Framework Core 2.1.1 to Entity Framework Core 7.0.11.

The following part of code (C#) ran fine with the older version:

 var items = _dbContext.Contacts
                       .Where(c => (c.UserId == userId));

 items = qitems.GroupBy(c => c.ContactId).Select(c => c.First());

items = items.OrderBy(c => c.CompanyName);
items = items.Skip(skip).Take(pageSize).ToList(); 

// the above operation is performed against a database context

But after the upgrade, I get this error:

System.Collections.Generic.KeyNotFoundException: the given key 'emptyprojectionmember' was not present in the dictionary.

I was expecting that the same code should run as before.