‘We’re all fucked.’

‘I know. I remember being little and being so absorbed by a Peter Pan picture book that I hid a torch under my mattress so I could read under the covers after I’d been put to bed. I was one of those annoying little girls who just wanted to be a boy. I had my hair cut short when I was seven and I refused to grow it until I went to secondary school.’ He smiled, his gaze breaking away from mine and roaming inquisitively across my face, as if it were a painting in a gallery. ‘What?’ I said, feeling the pinpricks of self-consciousness on my cheeks. I was nervous and talking too much.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Just the thought of seven-year-old you, with short hair, reading a book by torchlight. Makes me smile.’ I felt my knees unhinge.

‘Shall we walk?’ I asked, jarringly formal and clearly not at ease.

We walked side by side towards Parliament Hill, talking as we went, as I tried to keep up with his long-legged strides while not running out of breath. I was used to doing this with Katherine, who had been statuesque since we were teenagers and always loved pointing out on her iPhone how many fewer steps she’d taken on a walk we’d done together (all tall people are smug, whether they know it or not). Walking meant I could take him in with stealth side-eye; correcting the mistakes I’d made in my mind’s composite sketch. The distraction of navigating and looking ahead was also welcome, as a daylight activity date heightened all possibility for embarrassment. One of us could trip over a stick, or get shat on by a passing pigeon, or have our crotches sniffed by an overenthusiastic labradoodle at large. Every possible decision made me self-conscious.

As we paced up Parliament Hill, we talked about the city. I told him about the few memories I have of growing up in Mile End – looking up at palms three times the size of me on Columbia Road Market on a Sunday; the pub my dad used to read the newspaper in while I was allowed to eat chips and take sips of his beer; the bike I learnt to ride around the square we lived on. He told me how confused he’d been when he first moved here in his early twenties – how he’d assumed city-living meant a flat above a Chinese restaurant in Soho or a bookshop in Bloomsbury. He was surprised when he discovered all his graduate salary gave him was a matchbox-sized room in a six-person house-share in Camberwell. He told me about the domestic eccentricities of these strangers-turned-housemates, but I found it hard to not let my mind drift to what Max must have looked like as a twenty-three-year-old arriving in London – as fresh and rosy as a Somerset apple, his belongings boxed up on a Camberwell street, a Red Hot Chili Peppers poster rolled up in his backpack.

When we reached the summit, we sat on a bench that overlooked the sprawl of London’s central nervous system. Around us were a couple of groups of students drinking tinnies and being showily extroverted the way students in parks always are, and a few sets of couples who all looked like they’d met on Linx. Max and I tried to deduce at what point in their burgeoning relationship they all were. We agreed that the couple comprising a woman in a pair of large cork wedges, carrying a pearl-studded clutch bag and a man in a pair of utility shorts were definitely on date one and he’d surprised her with the location. The pair on the grass whose legs were tangled up like messy wires underneath a telly had definitely seen each other naked for the first time very recently – perhaps even the night before – and we concluded they’d bunked off work to stay in bed together all day and were taking their sexual compatibility out for a public spin. We decided the two men holding hands and grinning at the city skyline while talking about what they remembered of ‘life before the Shard’ had the comfortable, inane-but-devoted cosiness of two people teetering on the verge of saying ‘I love you’. I liked being a commentator and co-conspirator with Max. I could have done it all night.

We walked further north, on winding paths and through woodland scattered with sunset slices through gaps of branches. We managed to keep in step while always staying about ruler-width away from each other as we talked. I was fascinated by how he responded to nature – instinctively touching bark as he passed tree trunks and holding his face to the lethargic sunlight.

We emerged at the field beneath Kenwood House and found a patch of grass to sit on. I opened the wine and olives and we lay back on our elbows – I forgot to pack glasses, so we took turns to drink from the bottle. It was nearing mid-evening and the walkers and drinkers were disappearing. A little boy in a yellow sunhat scuttled across the field with the speed of a wind-up toy on a laminated floor.

‘ORLANDO,’ a marching man barked behind him. ‘Orlando, come back here NOW.’ The little boy picked up pace and his grin widened, the hat flew off his head.

‘Lando!’ the man bellowed again, chasing the errant hat. ‘Lando, I mean it, stop running RIGHT NOW or there will be NO MORE MEDIA all week.’

‘No more media,’ Max hissed into my ear despairingly.

‘Do you think you can be a parent and not be a bad-tempered tosser?’ I turned to ask him, our faces close to each other.

‘No,’ he said.

‘Look at him. He’s fine. He’s having fun. He’s in a field. He’s not running into a road. What’s the problem?’ We both watched Orlando, who had thrown himself on the grass and was rolling around like a hound, breathless with hysterical giggles. He definitely would not be enjoying any more ‘media’ for the foreseeable future. ‘It must be so sad, watching yourself become someone who is wound up and stressed out all the time. I don’t think there’s any way of avoiding it.’

‘Not having children?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s true.’

‘Do you want to have children?’ he asked. Lola had warned me this happens when you date after thirty – she said what was never mentioned before is now usually brought up within the first month. Katherine told me to let them know before we’d even met up.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I do.’

‘Me too.’

‘But I’m dreading it as much as I’m excited about it. I think watching my friends have babies has made me want them more and less in equal measure.’

‘I feel exactly the same,’ he said, taking rolling paper and tobacco out of his pocket.

‘I remember once seeing my goddaughter, Olive, hit her mum round the face while she was having a tantrum. Full-on whacked her across the cheek, left a bruise on her cheekbone. Three minutes later, she was in the bath, holding a rubber duck to her mum’s lips and saying in the sweetest voice I’ve ever heard: “Mama kiss ducky.”’ He laughed. ‘She’s going to have another one. My friend, Katherine. I always think that makes the strongest case for having a kid. If it were so bad, then people wouldn’t want to do it again.’

‘Why didn’t your parents have another one?’

‘I don’t think my mum ever really wanted to be a mum,’ I said. ‘I think she thought she did, then she had me and realized she didn’t.’

‘I don’t believe that for a second.’

‘No, no, it’s okay. I’m weirdly fine about it. I don’t think it was anything particularly to do with me, I think I could have been anyone and she would have been disappointed. I feel sorry for her, actually. It must be terrible to have a child and then realize it’s not the right decision for you. Particularly as you can’t say it out loud, so it’s a secret she’s had to keep for all my life.’ Max finished rolling his cigarette and lit it. ‘My dad, on the other hand – I think he would have had ten if he could.’

‘Did that cause problems between them?’

‘I don’t think so. He was just happy he finally had a family. He was in his forties when he married my mum.’

‘Are they happy now?’ he asked.

I took the cigarette from him and inhaled deeply.

‘I’m smoking again and it’s all your fault, Max. I actually bought a packet last week, which I haven’t done in years.’ He looked at me expectantly. ‘It’s complicated,’ I relented. ‘My dad’s ill.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. I took another drag and shook my head as if to tell him not to worry. He knew that what I meant was not to ask me anything more.

At the end of the bottle of wine, he pulled another out of his satchel. He stretched out on the ground and I lay beside him, watching the sky darken.

‘What’s Linx like?’ I asked.

‘You know what it’s like.’

‘No, I mean, for you. What are the women like?’

‘Oh.’ His fingertips reached out to my hand and the warm palm held mine firmly. ‘They’re all different.’

‘Well, obviously, but you must have noticed some patterns. I won’t think you’re being sexist, I promise. I’m genuinely curious.’