Omar looked back out to the stage, wondering how long Ali was going to be. ‘Would you like a proper drink?’ he asked kindly. He didn’t mind listening to Cassie’s problems, he was quite good at listening.

Cassie turned to him with a sigh. ‘You’re sweet, Omar, but all I really want is to go home and eat something. I didn’t want to get dragged out by Ali, and she made me drink all these vodka shots to cheer me up, and I don’t think it helped.’

‘Do you want me to help you get a cab, then?’ Omar offered.

Cassie shook her head. ‘No, I promised I’d wait for Ali. I can’t just leave her in Brick Lane, she’d be furious.’

‘Well, would you like to pop out and get some food then? Some dinner? No point you starving while you’re waiting.’

Cassie looked up gratefully again and nodded, with a slight smile. He went with her to get her coat, before they walked out into the chilly bright lights of Brick Lane, and realized, as someone tried to sell him a rose out of a plastic bucket at the exit, that he had asked someone to dinner, and they had said yes. To all intents and purposes, he was on a date, with a girl.

In the curry house, Cassie politely ordered a veggie biryani, which was one of the cheapest things on the menu, and fell on the poppadums with indecent haste. Omar felt comfortable enough with Cassie to order a Coke for himself, something he would never have dared to do with Sharif and the boys, and listened sympathetic-ally while she told him about the demise of her last relationship. It seemed that the boy, not a local one, had also been seeing a friend of hers; and when she had found out and confronted him, he had pointed out that she was just too much of a slut to go out with properly; he had just been using her for sex. And to make it worse, her hardly virginal friend had continued to see him, without any apologies, and had in fact cut Cassie out of her life instead. It was an unpalatable story that she seemed to find a lot easier to tell on a full stomach.

Thanks, for this,’ Cassie said. ‘I feel so much better now. I think all that vodka was just making me maudlin.’ She mopped up her remaining curry with a bit of the naan bread that Omar had insisted on ordering. The thing that hurts is that I really thought that Nico liked me. I didn’t think he loved me or anything like that, but I really thought he liked me. It’s all I wanted. It didn’t seem so much to ask for.’