‘Essence of man?’

‘Yes, like it’s all stripped back so he’s just … instinct and hair. I can’t explain it.’

‘Is he funny?’

‘Kind of,’ I said unconvincingly. ‘Not like Joe funny. But I don’t think I could be with someone Joe funny again.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah, it got a bit tedious all that “Is it just me or have you noticed this weird thing about deodorant” stuff. I don’t need to feel like I’m at the Royal Variety Show in my relationship any more. I’d quite like to be with someone a bit serious.’

‘He sounds great,’ she said, grinning. ‘When are you seeing him next?’

‘I don’t know, I haven’t actually heard from him yet.’

‘You should text him,’ she said. ‘Say: I loved meeting you the other night, when shall we do it again?’

‘I want to, but Lola says that’s not how this works.’

‘Lola has never had a boyfriend.’

‘Yes, but she’s dated a lot. You and I haven’t dated at all, really.’

‘But isn’t the point of dating to find a relationship?’

‘You make it sound like a sport,’ I said. Katherine always made me feel like I was taking part in a competition I couldn’t remember entering.

‘Do you want more coffee?’ she asked. I looked at my phone. I had to stay for at least another hour and a half.

Resetting the factory settings of a friendship is such a difficult thing to do. I knew it would take a long and uncomfortable conversation for us to say all we wanted to say and I couldn’t think of a time it would be convenient for us both to do it. I could count at least three elephants now omnipresent in the room of our friendship from my side, and I’m sure Katherine could count at least three more of her own. I couldn’t deduce how many elephants a friendship could withstand while still being able to function normally and when, if ever, they were going to stampede across us.

After exactly ninety more minutes had passed, I kissed Olive’s chocolatey cheeks goodbye. I hugged Katherine, congratulated her again on the pregnancy and told her I’d love to help her look for houses in Surrey if she needed another pair of eyes, which of course I didn’t mean. As I turned away, I felt the same sense of relieved satisfaction that I get when I clean my fridge or finish my tax return. I was pretty certain, from the other side of the door, I could hear Katherine have exactly the same thought about me.

When I arrived home, I knocked on the front door of the ground-floor flat for the fourth time that week. I’d missed a parcel and a piece of paper informed me it had been left with Angelo Ferretti downstairs. I’d tried to catch him when I heard he was leaving or entering the building, but somehow, I’d miss him. This time, to my surprise, the door opened after two knocks. A tall man appeared in the door frame. He had olive skin and brown hair that fell to his shoulders – which suggested a former hobby of small-warrior-figurine painting or a current hobby of weekend bass-playing in a band with some sad dads – paired with a counterproductive receding hairline. I would guess that he was a few years older than me. He wore a resting expression of incredulity.

‘Oh, wow! Hello,’ I said, with an awkward, flustered, jolly laugh that I hated. ‘Sorry, I wasn’t expecting you to answer. I’m Nina, I live upstairs. I moved in a couple of months ago.’ He blinked twice. Silence. ‘I tried to knock a few times when I first moved in, just to introduce myself, but we seemed to keep missing each other. Well, I seemed to keep missing you.’ More blinking, more silence. ‘Is it just you here?’

‘Yes,’ he said, his accent sprinkling thickly over his vowels.

‘Oh. Alma – she lives upstairs, she’s lovely – seemed to think you had a flatmate?’

‘She go,’ he said.

‘Ah, right.’

‘About three months ago, she leave.’

‘I see.’

He continued to administer silent blinks, indicating that the conversational portion of this exchange was officially over.

‘I think you might have a parcel for me?’

‘Yes, why they leave here?’

‘Because I was out.’

‘But why they leave with me?’

‘Because I said they could leave it with a neighbour. Is that okay? You can always leave your packages with me if you’re out.’

He shrugged and turned back into his flat. With his harshly carved features and lolloping, dislocated movements, he looked like an old-fashioned puppet being pulled by invisible strings. He returned and passed me the cardboard package. He had his hand on the door now – he wanted me to leave.

‘So. Angelo. Is that Italian?’

‘Why you know my name?’

‘On the missed parcel slip,’ I said. ‘It said it was left with you. Where in Italy are you from?’

‘Baldracca.’

‘Never been. Where is it?’

‘Look it up,’ he said, before closing the door.

I stood in the ringing echo of the slam and hoped that was the first and last time I would ever have to have a conversation with Angelo Ferretti from downstairs. In my flat, I opened my parcel, flattened the packaging for recycling and looked up Baldracca on Google Maps. Could not be found. I typed the word into a search engine. Its translation appeared immediately. Baldracca – Italian noun: whore (mostly used as an insult).

Lola was waiting for me on a bench outside the gym that evening. She had booked us in to do a class called ‘Body Boost’ which combined ‘weightlifting and tai chi to the soundtrack of eighties dance classics’.

‘Can you be bothered?’ she drawled as I approached, pulling me towards her and kissing both cheeks. She was wearing a stunningly strange workout combination of leopard-print leggings, a billowing cheesecloth top, aviator sunglasses, hoop earrings that were so big they rested on her shoulders and a silk jewelled headdress that looked a bit like a turban. She was drenched in the heavy, sweet warmth of her signature oud perfume.

‘Haven’t you already paid for it?’

‘Yeah, obviously we’ll do it, but I’m just checking if you still wanted to do it.’

‘You persuaded me to come.’

‘I know, it’s just –’ She gestured at an enormous carton of cranberry juice she was swigging from in a performative fashion and rolled her eyes.

‘The vet?’

‘All night. And he stayed the next day. Think we shagged for twelve hours.’

‘Lola, that’s got to be a lie.’

‘I wish it was,’ she said wearily, pulling a Twix out from her enormous tan leather handbag which had her initials monogrammed in gold. Lola liked everything to be monogrammed, from her phone to her washbag. It’s as if she was worried she would forget her own name.

‘Are you going to see him again?’

‘I don’t think so,’ she said, through indelicate, hurried chomps.

‘Why not?’

‘He’s nice, but … I don’t know. He did a couple of things that cringed me out a bit. He’s the sort of man who lies in bed after you’ve had sex and waits to catch your eye and says “Hey”.’

‘Oh God, that’s bad.’

‘Unforgivable,’ she said. She took the final bite of the Twix and put the wrapper in the bag, before pulling out a Kit Kat and a Twirl and unwrapping them both.

‘You all right?’

‘Yes, why?’

‘What’s with all the chocolate?’

‘Oh yeah, sorry. I went to a nutritionist because, you know, I sometimes get those stomach cramps after I eat? Anyway, she said the problem is, I shouldn’t be eating sugar after six, so I’m just getting these in now.’ She glanced at her digital watch, informing her it was 5.59 p.m. ‘Anyway, I’m done with these men who use me for the night to make them feel like they’re the star in some … mumblecore romcom, you know what I mean?’

‘I think so.’ The truth was, I very rarely knew what Lola meant when she said ‘you know what I mean?’, but I found her so entertaining, I never wanted to signal at a platform where her train of thought could stop.

I’d met Lola in the loo of a club in our university town in freshers’ week. I heard a girl crying in the cubicle next to mine and when I asked her if she was okay, she wailed that she’d had sex with a boy earlier that week and asked him the next morning to text her. He said he wouldn’t be able to because he had no credit on his phone and he’d run out of money. She drove him to a local cashpoint, took out twenty pounds, gave it to him to top up his phone and said she couldn’t wait to hear from him. The text never arrived. I asked her to come out of the loo to talk to me, but she said that half her make-up was down her face and she was too embarrassed for anyone to see her. I told her to lie down. And there, in the crack between the cubicle wall and the purple plastic floor, I saw Lola for the first time. Her huge aquamarine eyes leaking mascara tears down her face that was as orange and downy as a peach from too much cheap foundation. I reached out and put my hand on hers. The bass of ‘Mr Brightside’ vibrated through the floor and on to our cheeks.