Fifteen years ago, it was just a random quirk of fate that Daphne found me first in the maze. And that quirk has gone on to define the rest of our lives. So maybe this time … will it be Alice who finds me first instead? The idea makes my heartbeat instantly double its speed. Will I get to see what my life would look like if she and I had got together tonight?

There was always something between us, and over the years, it’s like fate has constantly found ways to bring us back together. There was Paris, then Marek’s wedding, and now this drink we’ve arranged back in 2020. Maybe this – tonight – is where it was all supposed to start? But instead, Daphne found me first during the game of Sardines, and all three of our lives were sent spiralling off in the wrong direction …

I must be breathing pretty heavily as these thoughts ricochet around my head because the bloke in the next cubicle thumps the wall and shouts, ‘You all right in there, mate? Tactical chunder?’

I unlock the door and splash some cold water on my face. As I walk out, still dripping and borderline hyperventilating, I bump straight into Alice on her way to the ladies’.

‘Bloody hell,’ she laughs. ‘You look like you’ve just done fifty lengths. You all right?’

I nod.

‘Oh-kay.’ She tilts her head at me. ‘Hardly chatted to you all night, Benjamin. Impossible to tear you away from the sexy props girl … who clearly fancies you, by the way.’

Telling me that random girls clearly fancied me was something Alice did quite a lot over this first term. I would estimate that ninety-eight per cent of the time it was utter bollocks, but still, it always made me feel pretty good. Probably because, even at nineteen, I realised that ‘so-and-so clearly fancies you’ can usually be translated as ‘I clearly fancy you’.

‘I’m not sure about that,’ I tell her.

‘Soooo modest.’ She rolls her eyes, mock dramatically, and gives me a coy smile. For a second, it’s like I’m right back at that wedding with her, feeling the words WHAT IF? burn themselves onto my brain.

‘What’s her name again, the props girl?’ Alice asks, fiddling with her fringe. ‘Daisy?’

‘Daphne.’

‘Daphne, right.’ Getting Daphne’s name wrong was something Alice did quite a lot from this night onwards. ‘Well, anyway, if you can tear yourself away from Daphne, maybe me and you can hang out a bit later?’ She grins and nudges my trainer with hers. ‘I feel like I’ve hardly seen you recently, what with having to rehearse all the time. And tomorrow it’s the holidays, so I won’t see you for, like, three weeks, you know?’