I pulled on my coat. Picked up my handbag. As I stood, we shook hands, and she said, ‘What’s his name, by the way?’

If she’d have asked tentatively, I might have understood. But she showed such a lack of self-awareness that my trust in her evaporated in that instant.

‘Whose?’

‘Your partner’s. The famous photographer!’

‘Art Wilson,’ I said, instinctively.

‘I’ll Google him!’ she said.

I looked at her face, trying to ascertain whether she was joking, whether she was making an ironic reference to the exact cause of the problem. It became apparent that she wasn’t. She was … well, there’s no other word. The simplest of reductions. She was excited.

I blinked and bade her farewell.

I cancelled my appointment the following week, before the required forty-eight-hour notice period.

By text.

IN

THE

BIN

(ONE WHOLE DAY)

APP IDEA

Gin is not my friend, I realise for the hundredth time. But more than that, I need to stop using my phone drunk. When oh when will they create a breathalyser app that disables your phone when you’re over the limit? A phone in the hands of a drunk person can do more damage than a car. I swear I’m first in the fucking queue to be liberated from this risk. There should be some kind of SAS service you can subscribe to that detects when you’re about to use your phone fucked and sends out special forces who crash through the nearest window and wrestle you to the ground and prise your phone out of your stupid drunk hand and incinerate it in a portable incinerator. Then they force-feed you a pint of water and two ibuprofen and two paracetamol and a burger and put you to bed. I would pay for this service, why does it not exist? It’s unthinkable it doesn’t. Yet another example of technology being ahead of humanity.

Sometimes I feel like it would be safer to stay in and never go out or see anyone or communicate at all, just to be sure there’s nothing to regret.

The day after Bin Day, I get up in the afternoon and cycle to the park. I steer my bike around a root-crinkled patch of tarmac. A teenage couple pass me. They’re holding hands and having a stilted conversation. Their hoods are up. I hear myself go Ah.

Evening is coming. The path is banded with the shadows of trees. Sometimes I could weep, quite tenderly, for the London childhood I never had. Then I remember the pollution problem. I sit on a bench and get out my phone, which I’ve had on silent, because that will show it.

Kelly has replied! (FINALLY.)

Hey love thanks for your message. Bit tied up but I’ll get back to you asap x

Don’t thanks for your message me – wtf????

Big wait. Two minutes. Then: