Amy had been on a yoga retreat, her unspoken agenda to find a man with a perfect and very supple body. ‘Lovely, inspiring, a real break but man-wise a total failure. There was this lovely guy on the course but there were more lovely women and he picked one of them.’

‘Oh, Amy, I am sorry.’

‘So, your perfect, hot-water-bottle borrowing hot-sex machine—’

‘I never said that!’

‘—hasn’t got a non-gay best friend, has he?’

Helena laughed, relieved to hear her friend wasn’t too cast down by her failure to snag a yoga expert.

‘Well, now you come to mention it, his best mate from forever, who I still haven’t met, is newly single. You might be just the person to make him happy again.’

‘I might be! Now tell me all about him.’

Helena realised she’d made an error. She knew very little about James apart from his name and that he and Jago went way back. She also knew he liked football and lager, neither of which was going to make him sound attractive to Amy.

‘To be honest, I don’t know anything – hardly anything – except he’s a mate of Jago’s.’

‘Men do sometimes have very peculiar friends and if they’re not peculiar they can be quite ugly.’

‘They can.’

‘So we look him up on Facebook,’ said Amy. ‘Where’s my laptop?’

There were an awful lot of people with the same name as Jago’s friend so Amy suggested they looked up Jago – in fact she had done it almost before Helena had realised her intention.

Helena wasn’t really happy with what Amy was doing – it felt like prying. She and Jago had no secrets between them and somehow looking him up on Facebook without asking felt wrong. But she knew an open objection, or a protest that she didn’t want to, would just encourage Amy in her investigations so she yawned instead.

‘I don’t know about you, Amy, but I’m done in. Can we do all this detective work tomorrow? Or maybe when we’re back home? We’ve got another very long day tomorrow and then we have to drive home.’

‘Oh,’ said Amy, looking disappointed. ‘I expect you’re right.’

‘And tomorrow is another day – you might meet the man of your dreams IRL – In Real Life,’ Helena added with emphasis, just in case Amy was too tired to understand the initials.

‘Yeah, right. I could meet a sheep farmer who knits his own hot-water-bottle covers out of old birds’ nests – how sexy is that?’

‘I think that could be perfectly sexy. But right now I need a shower and bed.’

She also wanted time alone so she could think about Jago uninterrupted.