Conflict can only lead to one thing – a state of unhappiness. As if you’re floating over a lake, its surface calm, unruffled, and the conflict breathes anger into the water from above and the rage ripples across the silvery blackness. I want very much to keep calm yet there’s something not right about the way Jenny is behaving. Covering up her excitement about the drink with Jerome, pretending to be interested in feeding her family.

It’s been on my mind, this self-sacrificial thing that I got myself involved in with Denise in Cork. How I pulled away, how I knew when to call it a night.

I should have fucked Denise. I might as well have considering she’s been going around telling everyone in the office that I did. But that’s not true – what is true however is that I missed out. It’s tormenting me, this wasted opportunity for a bit of sex. After all, it’s what I needed, still do. Seeing as Jenny’s in housewife mood I ask her what’s for dinner, if she’s decided yet. It doesn’t take me long to realize she doesn’t have any coherent plan as she lists at random the various staple foodstuffs that we have in our food cupboard, things like noodles and pasta in all shapes and tins of pulses. There’s more than fusilli, she assures me. There’s tagliatelle and rigatoni and penne.

Don’t you have a plan? I ask. I always have a plan.

Denise’s smile, her fuck-me warm Jack Daniel’s lips. Impressionable Denise. Up for a laugh. I stopped it to save me from myself. I know now that I shouldn’t have bothered my arse being so self-righteous. Nobody at work believes we didn’t fuck. I cannot think about that now.

So you’re going to go and meet Jerome then? I hold up a packet of penne. I know it’s what she’s going to resort to. I may as well start to prepare the tomato sauce. I think about adding a squirt or two of lemon juice as well as the obligatory tablespoonful of sugar because I’ve seen somebody at this, possibly on last year’s Bake Off when they were making pizza for the technical, but I’m not sure. It doesn’t matter somehow, the only thing that matters is that the knowledge has been absorbed.