When I was a kid, the idea of Having An Affair seemed like an incredibly elaborate, complex, almost Machiavellian thing to do. In my head, I built Dad up to be some sort of evil genius who’d spent months planning this dark, terrible scheme that would rip all our lives in two. But maybe I was giving him too much credit. Maybe he stumbled into it without thinking. Maybe he was just frightened and lonely and confused. If so, then I guess I’ve inherited those traits from him. None of his talent, none of his charm; just the cowardly, rotten, arsehole bits.

I pour myself another glass and stare down at the message, wondering how to reply.

The whole thing is just so … odd. I hadn’t seen Alice for years – not since Paris – until I bumped into her at Marek from uni’s wedding a few months back. Daff wasn’t able to make it, and Alice was on her own, too; she’d just split up with her fiancé in Manchester and was there, in her own words, ‘to get as drunk and cynical as humanly possible’.

I’d been really nervous about seeing her again, but right from the off, she acted like nothing had happened. As if there was no reason for any awkwardness. She beckoned me across the lawn with a glass of champagne, and after three more, we were engaged in a lively debate about the ethics of switching dinner-table name cards. Before a conclusion had been satisfactorily reached, Alice had done it – ‘Uncle Steve’ was settling down oblivious on the other side of the marquee, and she was sitting in his seat beside me grinning like a mischievous kid.

Over salmon and chicken and endless white wine, we steadfastly ignored our tablemates and huddled together revisiting the past, expounding on the present and then cringing at all the same bits in the speeches.

It wasn’t just that she looked hot – though she very much did – it was how she made me feel as I talked to her: like I was nineteen again, like the past fifteen years hadn’t happened and the future was still blank and inviting. It was just like in Paris: I loved the fact I could present an edited version of myself to her. I could prune away at the rudderless screw-up that Daphne has watched me become until a better man emerged.

And then later, right at the end of the night, something happened.

All I remember is that the music was winding down, and Alice must have been as wrecked as I was, because she dragged me off the dance floor and into the ‘quirky’ photo booth we’d spent most of the evening taking the piss out of.