Lucy Jameson checks her iPhone once again, sees that she has no messages and slips it back into her handbag. She’s tempted to call and ask Andrew what he’s playing at, but she’s too proud. No, she’ll wait five more minutes, then leave. After all, what are five more minutes on the back of twenty?

Viva is a chain of funky Italian restaurants, this one in the heart of Soho. It had been Andrew’s choice, and, while she’d prefer somewhere slightly more boutique, she agreed to the date because their profiles on MatchMe.com had been so compatible, their ‘Interests’ section interchangeable: ‘world cinema’, ‘travel’, ‘cooking’, ‘climbing’, ‘long walks in the country’, ‘nights by the fire with a good book and glass of rioja’.

Emails flew back and forth between them all week until he called last Friday.

‘I had to speak to you,’ he said. ‘If only to know you’re not some 70 year old man with emphysema in a bedsit in Eastbourne.’

She laughed, his sense of humour just her taste. ‘Does anyone else live in Eastbourne?’

As the waiter places plates down at the next table, Lucy is aware of his eyes on her. If he asks her again if she is ‘still waiting’ for her friend, she will scream. He’s no doubt hoping that she’ll leave so he can give her table to other customers, but he’s been so blatant in his reproach that she’s won’t give him the satisfaction.

She picks up the menu again and stares through it. She wonders if she should call Sherie and run the situation past her, but knows at once what her friend will say: ‘I can’t believe you’re waiting for some man you never met. Get your white ass out of there. Now.’

Lucy abhors Sherie’s ‘I don’t need a man’ act, not least because it is all a facade. Whenever they go out together, Sherie gets drunk, slips of her shoes in the taxi and literally cries on Lucy’s shoulder.

‘I want Tyrone back,’ she sobs. ‘What’d I do to lose him, Lucy? What’d I ever do?’

The answer, Lucy knows, is ‘nothing’, but the idea that you can do everything right and still lose the man that you love is simply too scary to voice.

The waiter is walking in Lucy’s direction again when her phone rings.

She takes it from her handbag to see the screen flashing with Andrew’s name. Her heart races and she feels simultaneous rushes of relief and rage. She holds her thumb over the ‘answer’ button until she feels she can maintain a neutral tone.

‘Did you change your mind?’ he asks.

‘I’ve been here since eight o’clock.’

‘What? I got here at ten to eight. Where’re you sitting?’

‘By the window,’ she says.

‘What can you see outside?’

She looks out into the light August night and sees a bar opposite.

‘Oh no,’ Andrew says when she tells him the name. ‘You’re at the wrong Viva. You’re in Soho.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Camden.’

‘Camden? I thought you said-,’

She catches herself. Hearing his voice makes her remember their conversation. He said he worked in Soho and that he was always going out in the area, so would she mind meeting him in Camden?

‘Do you still want to meet?’ he asks.

She sniffs. ‘Why not?’

‘So, your place or mine?’

She glances across the restaurant to see the waiter looking at her with unabashed disdain. ‘Mine.’

Hanging up the phone, Lucy feels a swell of hope for the evening ahead.

She calls Sherie; good news needs to be shared between friends.