Lunch is easy and fun. We haven’t sat down together for a while, as our schedules conflicted. Jane and I met at university in freshman’s week. She was attempting to chat up the head of the mountaineering club. I had my eye on him too, and for a week, we circled each other like gladiators after a lion. That ended one drunken night in the student bar when we realised that we’d both had him, and he hadn’t lived up to the promise of his carabiners. We got drunk and became each other’s best friend in the space of three hours. We’ve lived in each other’s pockets ever since. Evan, her husband, always said he knew he was taking on two people when he met Jane.

We eat our way through a delicious lunch, exchanging gossip about the goings-on in other chambers. When she calls for the bill, I sit back in my chair and idly scan the busy restaurant. And that’s when I see him.

It’s the man who’d witnessed my exchange with Micky in my building’s corridor. He’s sitting alone at a table, looking down at his phone. I can only see his profile, but it’s definitely him, and I sit forward, interested.

“Who are you looking at?” Jane asks, handing her card to the waiter with a smile of thanks.

“Him,” I say, pointing. “He’s staying in the flat opposite me.”

“The one where the hottie Luke lives?”

I nod.

“Who is he?” she asks. “Have you been introduced?”

“In a manner of speaking.” I bring her up to speed, and at the end of the story, she throws her head back, laughing. Jane has an extremely loud laugh, and, as if on cue, other people turn around, including my onlooker of this morning. Before I know it, I’m out of my chair and striding over to him.

“Hello,” I say. “We meet again.”

He looks up at me, smiling and now that I’m viewing his features more closely, I get the odd feeling that I’ve seen him before—and not only during that unfortunate episode with Micky. He has brown hair shot through with grey that tumbles around his angular face, and a scruffy jaw that manages to be neither designer stubble nor a beard. He’s tanned, telling me he hasn’t been in England for a while, and I put him in his mid to late forties. He isn’t pretty, but his eyes are stunning. They’re pale green, the colour of the sea in Denmark where the warm shallows meet the cold deep. My stomach dips, and I wonder if I’m getting indigestion.

“So we do,” he says. His voice is low and pleasant. “How nice to meet you when you’re not dealing with a naked man with a ribbon around his genitals.”

“Ack, it’s been a slow day,” I say.