She shrugs. ‘Thanks. It was pretty fun. But tonight’s what I’ve really been looking forward to.’ She smiles at me for a second before adding: ‘The cast party, I mean.’

I smile back and find myself wondering if she always imagined this would be our night too.

She picks up two shots from the tray in front of us and says: ‘Here, come on. Let’s get very, very pissed.’

I smile and nod, feeling exactly as torn as I did all those years ago; part of me enjoying the feeling of being flirted with by Alice, the other part desperate to see Daphne again.

We do another grimace-inducing sambuca shot each, and then Alice squeezes my arm and gets up to say hi to somebody else. And as I scan the room again, Daff is suddenly there, right on cue.

She’s standing at the bar with her best friend, Jamila, and a few of her other mates. She gives me a grin and a wave and then turns back to them.

Under the bar’s garish strip lighting, I can finally see her face properly, and my heart starts pulsing in my chest. It’s stating the blindingly obvious to say that she looks younger – a little bit redder and rounder in the cheeks – but the really big difference is in the way she carries herself. There’s this lightness to her that I remember being immediately struck by when I first met her – a goofy, playful silliness that I honestly haven’t seen in years.

Probably because I’ve managed to gradually grind it out of her.

She’s listening to Jamila tell some story, and as she nods along, she nibbles absent-mindedly at the rim of her plastic pint glass. That’s a trait I remember thinking was a cute little nervous tic, until I later learned it was a tactical ploy to hide her top lip.

Daff’s always had a weird thing about her top lip. She hates the little scattering of light brown freckles that run across it – which, to be honest, I’ve always thought were really cute. But some boy at her school once teased her about them in Year 8, and it’s stuck with her ever since.

And now here she comes, walking towards me, smiling awkwardly, and I have to pretend I don’t know any of that. I have to pretend I don’t know anything about her. That she’s some random girl I’ve just met.

How the hell am I supposed to do this?

‘Hey!’ she says. ‘Not-Naked Ben.’

‘Not-Naked Daphne. Hi.’

She pulls out Alice’s chair, and before I can tell her that it’s Alice’s chair, she’s plonked herself down in it. She raises her pint glass to me. ‘Congratulations again on your stellar performance.’