‘I’ve liked this girl for ages, man, and then you start …’ His eyes suddenly light up and a smile splits his face in two. ‘Ah, no, screw it. I literally, physically, cannot be angry at you right now.’ He drops his voice to a whisper. ‘So, last night, right. Work Christmas party. We finally … Yeah. And it was, like …’ He slaps both hands on my shoulders, puffs his cheeks out, rolls his eyes and exhales slowly into my face.

‘What does that mean?’ I ask. ‘Exhausting?’

‘What it means is, we had actual sexual intercourse. And it was really quite something, Benjamin.’ He gazes up at the ceiling and shakes his head. ‘It was really quite something.’

He looks so joyously, heartbreakingly happy that I’m not sure what to say. I mean, what can I say?

Olivia Woodford is, without a doubt, the worst thing that will ever happen to him.

From the start, their relationship was so dangerously unbalanced that I could hardly believe it lasted six weeks, let alone four years. Four whole years of Harv jogging along a few steps behind her, never being quite rich enough, or cool enough, or … anything enough for her.

They met at this music marketing company where Harv had a low-level admin job. Liv was employed there – as far as I could understand – on the sole basis that her dad had been in the same university drinking club as the CEO. After weeks of me listening to Harv moon on about her while we played PlayStation, they finally hooked up at the office Christmas party.

And that was it. I pretty much lost him for the next four years.

It was partly because I didn’t much like Liv, to be honest. She seemed to have that thing a lot of ridiculously hot people have, where they assume their ridiculous hotness is an acceptable excuse for extreme unfriendliness. Talking to her was a constant battle for eye contact; she always seemed to be looking over my shoulder for someone more interesting. But more than that, I didn’t like who Harv became as their relationship intensified.

In an effort to fit in with Liv and her rich hipster mates, he became colder and harsher and more sarcastic. He seemed to lose all the things I’d liked about him at university: his self-deprecating humour, his goofy charm, his infectious excitement for life. He was besotted with her – ‘besotted’ really is the perfect word – and in her presence he would dial his confidence up and his self-awareness down. To me, it always seemed obvious that he was trying so, so hard. And I guess I’ve always thought that real love is about not having to try at all.

But then look where that’s got me.