Phil and Marek trade consistent blows too, their voices getting louder as the empty wine bottles stack up. Phil ‘seriously cannot believe’ that Marek has never been to South America – he and Becky spent three weeks in Argentina last summer, and it was ‘iconic’. Marek retaliates with a blitzkrieg of name-dropping: he had an ‘epic’ meeting last week about shooting a soft drink campaign with Tim Henman (‘a bloody good guy’). Plus an encouraging Skype call about a cufflink commercial with Piers Morgan, who apparently is surprisingly down-to-earth.

As the meal goes on, I watch them all closely – my new partner and my new friends – and it strikes me that they’re not really talking to each other; they’re just taking it in turns to speak, each gearing up for their latest pitch about why they’ve got the best job, or the best house, or the best taste in restaurants or TV shows or holidays.

The scariest thing is that Alice is competing the hardest. She interrupts excitedly whenever she can trump an anecdote, and twitches with annoyance whenever someone trumps one of hers.

I do my best to make an effort and join in, but it gets harder and harder as the afternoon draws on. Not just because my thoughts keep flying back to Daphne, but also because Alice seems to jump on pretty much every comment I make, either dismissing it out of hand or using it as a springboard to wring a laugh from the others.

At one point, Phil presses me for further information on Wyndham’s, and I mumble something neutral about how I’m ‘getting along OK there’. Alice cuts in sharply and snaps, ‘Don’t be stupid, Ben, you’re doing amazingly.’ She turns to Becky and Dee: ‘Dad says he’s actually in line for a promotion pretty soon.’

Phil smirks at this. ‘Dad says …’ he chuckles under his breath.

Alice shoots me an irritated glance before turning away again. She seems to take my self-deprecation as a personal slight, as if it reflects badly on her. It’s like she wants our friends to believe I’m a success because it makes her a success for being with me.

On the other hand, though, she also seems to relish any chance to put me down in front of them. When Marek starts laying into some ‘massively pretentious’ new novel he’s reading, Alice groans and looks over at me.

‘Oh my God, Ben, do you remember your novel?’ She puts her head in her hands, miming utter mortification.

‘That bad, was it?’ Phil booms over the laughter.

Alice sets her teeth and winces at me. ‘Sorry, babe. I’m being mean. But it was a bit cringe.’

‘No, it’s true,’ I say quietly. ‘It was pretty terrible.’

‘Aw, sweet that you let her see it, though,’ Dee says, reading my mind – although I’d have swapped the word ‘sweet’ for ‘insane’.