Charlie rolled her eyes. ‘I don’t want to talk about it. I’d rather talk about something interesting. Like sex.’

We were sitting in Starbucks near Old Street station, close to Victor’s office. Charlie had suggested meeting for lunch. She looked great in her work clothes, with her hair neat and her crisply ironed clothes.

‘I think the man behind you heard you,’ I whispered.

She smiled naughtily. ‘I can’t help it. I want to drag you into an alleyway and have my wicked way with you.’ She popped a grape into her mouth and sucked it. ‘Why don’t we go into the toilet now?’

Beneath the table she pressed her legs against mine and I felt my cock grow hard. It was frustrating, not being able to touch her flesh. At my flat, in those sex-drunk days between Christmas and her return to work, we couldn’t keep our hands off each other, and didn’t have to. But there was something deliciously tantalising about having to wait, knowing that when she finished work she would come round to mine and we could take our clothes off.

A thought struck me. ‘How come we never go to your place?’

She pulled a face, like the grape she was eating was sour. ‘It’s horrible, that’s why. There’s no privacy. There, you wouldn’t be able to push me over the kitchen worktop and enter me while we were cooking dinner . . .’

‘Charlie!’ I hissed, gesturing at the man behind her with my eyes as he looked round, shocked. She was so bad.

She smiled and sipped her fruit juice. ‘I hate being Charlotte. I want to come home with you and be Charlie.’

I needed to change the subject before the urge to take her into the Starbucks toilet became too much. So I told her about the meeting with Victor and how it connected with Sasha.

She looked at her watch and grimaced. ‘I’ve only got five minutes.’

‘But you’ll come round later?’

‘Try and stop me. I’ll make dinner.’

‘You don’t have to. I’m happy with a takeaway. Or I could make dinner.’

‘Are you a good cook?’

‘No, I’m terrible. Sometimes I have nightmares in which I’m forced to be a contestant on Masterchef. The whole nation could witness my humiliation. I once managed to set a pan of spaghetti on fire. Even my boiled eggs come out wrong. I’m probably the worst cook in the world.’

She reached under the table and squeezed my thigh. ‘You can’t be good at everything. I’d much rather you were good at cunnilingus than cooking.’

The man behind her almost fell off his chair.

‘It feels wrong, though,’ I said. ‘Having a woman come round and cook me dinner. I don’t want you to think I’m a typical sexist bloke.’