‘I’m not being needy, I just find it interesting that your current girlfriend gets the benefit of all the tellings-off I gave you over the years, whereas your ex-girlfriend still has to put up with the same old shit.’

‘Oh, come on,’ he said, putting his arm around me, the smell of his armpit as evocative to me as a late grandmother’s perfume. ‘I’ll buy you one of those unfathomably big Cokes that you only let yourself drink at the cinema, how about that? And you can drink it all in one, like you always do, and piss everyone off getting up and down to go to the loo, like you always do.’ My shoulder sank into his armpit, and I put my arm around his back.

After the film, we went to a Vietnamese place nearby that I had heard did some of the best pho in London, which I was writing my column about that week. Joe, positively monarchic in his enthusiasm for feasting, always loved joining me on these culinary investigations.

‘How’s work?’ I asked, in between slurps of soupy noodles.

‘Work’s fine, as rewarding as sports PR can be.’

‘Are you still looking at maybe going to another agency?’

He wiped at his mouth with the napkin he’d tucked into his T-shirt like a baby’s bib. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘I think something happens in your thirties where you slightly let go of this idea of the perfect career. I have so much fun outside of work, maybe it’s enough that it’s just fine. It pays okay, I get on with my colleagues. At the end of the day, it’s just ye olde day job.’ What a relief it was for Joe to make these Chaucerian jokes now and it not pose a threat to my desire for him. ‘How are you?’ he asked. ‘What’s new?’

‘Nothing really, still settling into the flat, have to take my time making it my own as I don’t have any cash and there’s lots that needs doing to it. But I suppose it’s nice to think of it as a long-term project.’

‘Yeah, course,’ he said, slightly zoning out as he signified to the waitress that he wanted another beer.

‘And I’m excited about the new book coming out.’

‘I can’t wait to read it.’

‘And I’m seeing someone.’

He looked at me, slightly open-lipped. ‘Since when?’

‘Month and a half?’ I said, trying my best to seem unbothered by this announcement. ‘Around that.’

He nodded, plunging his chopsticks back into his bowl to dig around for hidden noodles. ‘That’s good, you’re seeing someone. I was worried for all that time that you weren’t.’

‘Why were you “worried”?’ I said, annoyed at his attempt to patronize me and conceal it as compassion.

‘It was just that you seemed to be not dating anyone for a really long time.’

‘I did that on purpose, I was getting my career on track. Leaving teaching, going fully freelance, writing a book, buying a flat on my own. Quite a lot to do while trying to be some girl about town dating.’

‘Where did you meet …?’

‘Max,’ I replied.

‘Max,’ he said, trying the word on for size.

‘On a dating app.’

‘I never thought you’d do that.’

‘You don’t really have a choice any more, people don’t meet in real life. Look at Lola.’

‘Yeah,’ he laughed fondly. ‘Dear old Lola. How’s she doing? I haven’t seen her for a while.’

I’d noticed that ‘dear old’ had become almost a permanent prefix when people referred to Lola. ‘She’s good, still dating.’

‘So what’s he like?!’ he asked with reluctant parental enthusiasm.

‘He’s … tall,’ I said. ‘Very tall.’

‘I thought you didn’t like tall people.’

‘What an insane thing to say, why would I have ever said that?’

‘You’re always complaining about them blocking your view at gigs and taking the front seat of a car. I specifically remember you saying you’d never fancy a lanky guy.’

‘He’s not lanky, he’s very broad.’ I could see Joe instinctively puff his chest out. His napkin bib was splattered with brown broth.

‘Doesn’t sound like your type at all.’

‘That’s what I’ve always thought about Lucy,’ I said, instantly regretting how bitter it sounded.

He smiled, put his chopsticks down and adjusted the bamboo placemat ceremoniously. ‘I’m proposing.’

‘What?!’

‘I know!’

‘When?’

‘This weekend.’

‘Wow, that’s unexpected,’ I said.

‘Is it?’

‘I suppose it isn’t. We’re in our thirties, you’ve been together for quite a while. Sorry, I don’t know why I’m quite so shocked.’

‘I’ve known I was going to do it for months. I designed the ring.’

‘Chill out, Richard Burton,’ I said, passive-aggressively spooning chilli sauce over my bowl, previously unaware that I could dispense condiments passive-aggressively. ‘What do men even mean when they say that: designed the ring? You can barely pick out your trousers in the morning.’

‘I mean, I sat down with a jewellery designer and told him the sort of thing she’d like. Look,’ he said, taking out his phone and showing me a photo of a small round diamond surrounded by other smaller round diamonds. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an engagement ring I could remember.

‘That’s beautiful, Joe,’ I said. ‘Really well designed.’

‘Thank you,’ he said, missing the light sarcasm in my voice.

‘I didn’t think you were that keen for marriage,’ I said. ‘We always talked about kids but never getting married.’

‘Yeah, but that was with you,’ he said.

‘Cheers.’

‘No, I mean, the future you decide with a person is different for every person, isn’t it? It’s not like you decide what you want then someone else fits into that. We decided we wouldn’t have got married. Lucy and I discussed quite early on that we would get married.’

‘How early on?’ I asked.

‘Early, I think. Within the first few dates.’

‘Was that the date when she took you to a bridal fair?’

‘It wasn’t a bridal fair,’ he said impatiently. ‘It was to help her sister pick her wedding shoes.’

‘Hot,’ I said. ‘I don’t know how women like Lucy do it. Every heterosexual woman I know is emotionally paralysed in relationships by this fear of “scaring men off”. Then you have your Lucys of this world, these total anomalies, who know what they want and say: “I’m the boss, here are the rules, do as I say.” And so many men seem to love it. Like it’s a relief, or something.’

‘Yeah, well, it worked for me,’ he said. We drained the remaining soup with our wooden ladles, silent but for slurps.

‘I’m really happy for you both,’ I finally said. ‘I can’t wait to see you get married. If I’m invited to the wedding.’

‘Of course you’ll be invited.’

‘All these things we thought about each other,’ I said. ‘Doesn’t like tall people, wouldn’t join dating apps, never wanted to get married. Funny how wrong we were.’

‘We weren’t wrong,’ he said. ‘We were growing up.’

On the bus back home, longing for something unchangeable, I made the mistake of calling Mum and Dad.

‘Hello?’ Mum barked as she picked up the landline, harried and hassled, as if I were a PPI salesman calling for the fifth time in an hour.

‘Hi, Mum, it’s me,’ I said gently.

‘Oh, Nina, hi.’

‘How are you? Everything okay?’

‘Not really, no.’

‘What’s up?’ I didn’t know when this started happening, when I would turn to my mother for comfort and find myself very quickly being her counsellor.

‘I am having a nightmare evening. I was meant to be at a local production of A Doll’s House and –’

‘Where on earth is there a production of A Doll’s House in Pinner?’

‘It’s at the Watford Community Theatre. Gloria’s am-dram group are doing it and I’ve been excited about seeing it for weeks. Tonight was closing night. The cast are going out afterwards to that local nightclub, and we were all going to go dressed up as persecuted women from history. I’ve been working on my costume all week.’

‘What happened?’

‘I get a call this evening from Mary Goldman, telling me she’s received a condolence letter from your father about the death of her husband, Paul. Pages and pages, it went on for, about all their memories watching the football together and how he thought he hadn’t been himself or looked well for a number of years. How sorry he was to lose such a special man.’

‘What’s wrong with that?’

‘Paul Goldman hasn’t bloody died.’

‘Oh,’ I said.

‘He isn’t even bloody ill, he’s fine.’

‘Okay, that’s obviously not great. But it’s clearly just a mix-up. Has someone else called Paul died?’

‘No,’ she said.

‘Has someone else died recently that you’ve told Dad about?’

‘Err,’ she said hesitantly, annoyed at my line of rational inquisition when she was in a mood to rant. ‘I mean, Dennis Wray died this week, but Dennis is nothing like Paul. Dennis is an old colleague of your dad’s, we’ve been friends with Paul and Mary for thirty years.’

‘It will be that then. He just got muddled, he gets muddled with details and timelines, you need to make things as clear as possible, he isn’t being difficult. It’s like he knows the shapes of things, but he sometimes gets the colours confused.’

‘Mary doesn’t care about all that, she’s just beside herself. It really upset her.’

‘Well, Mary Goldman is a twat.’