A scraggly rust-coloured beard above a tie covered with cartoon reindeer. Two twinkling blue eyes that meet mine as he shoots me a wink …

I launch up from my chair, nearly spilling every drink on the table.

‘Are you OK?’ Daphne laughs.

I’m craning my neck to see through the mass of people surrounding the bar. But he’s not there. I must have imagined it. After all, I’ve just come back fifteen years: why would he look exactly the same and be wearing the exact same tie?

I must be losing it.

‘Sorry. Just thought I saw someone I knew.’ I slump back down, but Daphne’s attention is focused on the other end of the table. Marek is now aggressively drunk and sounding off so loudly that everyone is forced to turn and listen.

‘I’m honestly glad that people walked out,’ he shouts. ‘The truth is, you can’t produce a truly great work of art that is also commercially successful. It cannot be done. The two things are fundamentally incompatible.’

Everyone around him nods in solemn agreement, and I suddenly remember exactly how this bit goes.

Daphne puts down her glass, clears her throat and then asks him, quite earnestly: ‘Do you think that’s definitely true?’ Fifteen heads turn to look at her.

Marek is used to holding court without any interruptions whatsoever, so he’s now staring at Daphne like she’s just poured her pint over him.

‘Er, yeah,’ he snaps. ‘I do.’

‘Oh, OK then. Fair enough.’ She nods and says nothing more. Marek clearly feels the need to reassert himself, though. ‘You don’t think it’s true, then, I’m guessing?’ he says.

‘Well, no.’ She shrugs, apologetically. ‘I think there are lots of good writers who are also commercially successful.’

‘Go on, then,’ Marek smirks. ‘Would you care to enlighten us with some examples?’ Daff opens her mouth to speak, but he shouts over her before she can get a word out: ‘Because, to be honest, I’m not sure I’d even want to be commercially successful anyway.’ She tries again, but Marek is way too loud for her. ‘Anything of any real artistic merit has always been scorned or ignored by the masses,’ he proclaims. ‘Like, look at the Dada movement, right …’ – and at this point, I stop listening and focus on watching Daphne.

She doesn’t seem particularly cross at being interrupted; she just sits there looking at Marek with one eyebrow raised, and it hits me again that I haven’t seen this playful, feisty spark in her in years. If we hadn’t got together – got married – maybe she’d still have it.

‘But isn’t that the ultimate dream?’ she says, when Marek finally breaks off for a swig of snakebite. ‘To make something really good that also resonates with lots of people?’