‘Hold on there, mister, what if we can’t? Unlock it, I mean? Are we stuck there forever?’

‘Haha, no, they let us out after an hour. You’ve never done one? Okay, wear comfortable clothes, like, no high heels or tight dresses.’

Tight dresses? I thought. You’d be lucky!

‘Is it maths and stuff?’ I asked. ‘Because I’m terrible at that. I don’t want to be responsible for us losing.’

‘Not maths. Basic cop on, mostly. And I’m really competitive; we’ll definitely win.’

Well? I asked the voice in my head. Should I go?

But that day, she remained frustratingly silent.

So I ran the whole thing by my sisters.

‘What age is he?’ Claire asked.

‘Same as me? Maybe a bit younger?’

‘Kids? Ex-wife? Job?’ Margaret asked.

‘I don’t know. But by the law of averages, he’s likely to tick some of the boxes.’

‘And you’re okay if there are kids and an ex-wife?’ Claire asked. ‘Like, you’d better be. At your age, everyone has baggage.’

‘Is he a Feathery Stroker?’ Helen asked. ‘Has to be if he was trying meditation.’

The term ‘Feathery Stroker’ originated years ago in New York after Anna’s friend Jacqui slept with a kind, respectful man who’d spent most of the night stroking her body with featherlight pressure. Unbearable, she’d said. Being flung across a bed and ravaged was much more her thing.

To be fair, many people would adore a session of feathery stroking but the phrase caught on and spread to condemn all straight men who were a bit, I suppose, earnest. Perhaps slightly humourless and pompously right-on: men who pontificated about their homemade tamarind marinade with its secret ingredient (which was always tabasco); who defended public breastfeeding even when there had been no objections; who sought your opinion about putting their cat on Valium or who pronounced ‘artisanal’ in a nonexistent French-meets-Dutch accent (‘oar-tijj-in-owwl’).

I, personally, wouldn’t have been keen on actual feathery stroking but more and more blameless men came to be written off as the circles of definition expanded: those who habitually used the word ‘groceries’; had opinions on fabric softener; spent more than thirty seconds going down on you; or had no reservations about eating a mango in the street.

If any of those misfortunates fancied one of my sisters or their friends, they were laughed out of it. And if you liked a man, the very last thing you wanted was for him to be categorized as a Feathery Stroker.

As Quin had done a meditation weekend, he was about to be written off and—surprising myself—I said, ‘He’s not a Feathery Stroker. He looks like he does triathlons and might bore on about clothes that wick away sweat.’ Hastily I added, ‘But he might not, either.’ (Boring on about clothes that wick away sweat was also suspect.)

Helen groaned. ‘Christ, one of them. Betcha he has a spork.’