She grabbed a bottle of perfume and gave herself, and me, a quick squirt as we left the shop. We headed up Oxford Street and into Soho. I wanted to take her hand but didn’t dare. Actually, what I really wanted to do was grab her and push her into a shop doorway, pull her against me and feel her mouth on mine.

Instead, we went into a bar where we drank cocktails, then another bar, and then a walk through air so cold it almost sobered me up, to Leicester Square and a club, the name of which escapes me now but which was so loud it made my ears ring for a day afterwards, the drinks ludicrously expensive, the dance floor crowded and sticky underfoot, the toilets full of wankers snorting coke . . . But none of that mattered. I was drunk, I was high on Charlie’s company and I felt as if I was floating through the crowds of revellers.

There was a moment on the dance floor that will stay with me forever. A Calvin Harris track was playing, and Charlie was dancing in front of me, holding my gaze and smiling as she swung her hips and shoulders, the lights pulsing and throbbing, and I was aware, even as I lived it, that this was going to be one of the highlights of my life. When I was old this song would come on the radio and I would be thrown back in time to this golden moment, when I was young and dancing with a beautiful woman in the greatest city in the world and all my troubles were behind me and my life stretching in front of me. Then I stopped analysing the moment and melted into it.

We tumbled out of the club at two a.m. into the bitterly cold night. I put my arm around her and she didn’t protest. Her hip was bony and solid in my palm. I still hadn’t kissed her.

‘That was fun,’ she said. She yawned. ‘And now I’m pooped. I have work in the morning. The last day before the Christmas break.’

There were still a lot of people around. As we walked towards the taxi rank, Charlie flicked her thumb over her phone, texting someone.

A tall man was walking along the pavement towards us. He had a great mop of blonde curly hair. He had his head down, shuffling his feet. Then he looked up and the moment he saw us he crossed the road.

‘That was weird,’ I said.

‘Huh?’ Charlie looked up from her phone.

‘Some guy just crossed the road like we were a couple of terrifying would-be muggers.’

‘Ha – really? Well, you are scary looking, Andrew. I didn’t want to say, but . . .’

The tall curly-haired man had vanished into a side street.

‘Do you want to share a taxi back to south London?’ I asked. ‘I mean, it can drop you at yours first . . .’