“Nettie!” Ollie cries.

If there is a lack of resemblance between Ollie and Tom, there is no doubt Antoinette is Tom’s daughter. She has his ruddy cheeks and stockiness, while at the same time being endearingly pretty. Stylish too, in a grey woolen dress and black suede boots. According to Ollie, his younger sister is married, childless, and some sort of executive at a marketing company who is often asked to speak at conferences about women and the glass ceiling. At thirty-two years old, only two years older than me, I’ll admit, I’d found this impressive and a little intimidating, but it is all swept under the rug when she greets me with an enormous bear hug. The Goodwins, it appears, are huggers.

All of them, perhaps, except Diana.

“I’ve heard so much about you,” she says. She links her arm with mine and I am engulfed in a cloud of expensive-smelling perfume. “Come and meet my husband, Patrick.”

Nettie drags me through an arched doorway, past what looks like an elevator—an elevator! As we walk we pass framed artwork and floral arrangements, and photos of family holidays on the ski slopes and at the beach. There is one photo of Tom, Diana, Nettie and Ollie on camels in the desert with a pyramid in the background, all of them holding hands and raising their hands skyward.

Growing up, I used to go to the beach town of Portarlington for holidays, less than an hour’s drive from my house.

We stop in a room that is roughly the size of my apartment, filled with sofas and armchairs, huge, expensive-looking rugs and heavy wooden side tables. A gigantic man rises from an armchair.

“Patrick,” he says. His handshake is clammy but he looks apologetic so I pretend not to notice.

“Lucy. Nice to meet you.”

I’m not sure what I expected for Nettie—perhaps someone small, sharp, eager to please, like her. At six feet three inches, I thought Ollie was tall, but Patrick is positively mountain-like—six seven at least. Apart from his height, he reminds me a little of Tom, in his plaid shirt and chinos, his round face and eager smile. He has a knitted sweater around his shoulders, preppy-style.

With all greetings out of the way, Ollie, Tom and Patrick sink into the large couch and Diana and Nettie wander off toward a drinks station. I hesitate a moment, then fall into step beside the women.

“You sit down, Lucy,” Diana directs me.

“Oh, I’m happy to help—”

But Diana raises her hand like a stop sign. “Please,” she says. “Just sit.”

Diana is obviously trying to be polite, but I can’t help but feel a little rejected. She isn’t to know, of course, that I’d fantasized about bumping elbows with her in the kitchen, perhaps even facing a little salad crisis together that I could overcome by whipping up a makeshift dressing (a salad crisis was about all my culinary capabilities could stretch to). She isn’t to know that I’d imagined nestling up to her as she took me through photo albums, family trees and long-winded stories that Ollie would groan about. She doesn’t know I’d planned to spend the entire evening by her side, and by the time we went home, she’d be as enamored with me as I’d be with her.

Instead, I sat.

“So, you and Ollie work together?” Tom asks me, as I planted myself next to Ollie on the sofa.

“We do,” I say. “Have done for three years.”

“Three years?” Tom feigns shock. “Took your time, didn’t you, mate?”

“It was a slow burn,” Ollie says.

Ollie had been the classic, solid guy from work. The one always available to listen to my most terrible dating stories and offer a sympathetic shoulder. Ollie, unlike the powerful, take-charge assholes that I tended to date, was cheerful, unassuming and consistently good guy. Most importantly, he adored me. It had taken me a while to realize it, but being adored was much nicer than being messed around by charismatic bastards.

“He isn’t your boss, is he?” Tom twinkles. It’s horrendously sexist, but it’s hard to be annoyed with Tom.

“Tom!” Diana chides, but it’s clear she finds it hard to be annoyed with him too. She’s back now with drinks, and she purses her lips in the manner of a mother trying to discipline her very cute, disobedient toddler. She hands me a glass of red wine and sits on the other side of Ollie.

“We’re peers,” I tell Tom. “I recruit for the technical positions, Ollie does support staff. We work closely together.”

Very closely lately. It started, oddly enough, in a dream. A bizarre, meandering dream that started at my great-aunt Gwen’s barbeque and ended at the house where my best friend from primary school lived, but she wasn’t a little girl anymore, she was an old lady. But somewhere in the middle, Ollie was there. And just like my best friend from primary school, he was different. Sexier. The next day, at work, I sent him an email saying he’d been in my dream the night before. The expected “What was I doing?” banter followed, with an undercurrent. Ollie’s office was right next door to mine, but we’d always sent each other emails from the next office—witty commentary about our shared boss’s Donald Trump hair, suspicious behavior at the office Christmas party, requests for sushi orders for lunch. But that day, it was different. By the end of the day my heart was skipping a beat when his name appeared in my in-box.

For a while I’d kept my head about it. It was a rendezvous, a tryst . . . not a relationship and certainly not the relationship. But when I noticed him giving money to the drunk at the train station every morning (even after the drunk abused him and accused him of stealing his booze); when he’d spotted a lost little boy at the shopping center and immediately lifted him up over his head and asked if he could see his mum anywhere; when he began to occupy more and more of my thoughts, a realization came: this is it. He’s the one.