The Matts and Toms teased her. At first, Harri wasn’t upset or offended. Just baffled. ‘Andy? My old mucker, Andy? Known him for years! What are you talking about?’ It was TBM who realised she was in love with him. He sent flowers. A lavish, phallic, red, pointy, hedge sized bouquet. She read the card and assumed the florist had made a mistake and meant to send them to some other girl. He called and called, and Harri would be laughing at something Andy was saying, oblivious to the phone buzzing in her bag. Eventually TBM confronted Harri at her desk. It took her a moment to tune into what he was saying, because she was trying to recognise the rock star on his shirt.

‘Is it serious…’ he hissed, ‘actually serious, between you and that…spod?’

Oh! It was Chairman Mao! A man responsible for the persecution of tens of millions of people, now an ironic, expensive fashion joke on TBM’s chest.

‘Who? Andy?’ She smiled sweetly. She wasn’t sure that she could have told him, even if she wanted to. But she didn’t want to. ‘Why?’

When TBM became angry, which was often, his rage came from sheer confusion. Why isn’t the world working for me? Why am I not getting exactly what I want, when I want it? He had arranged his life so carefully, for the complete avoidance of disappointment and pain, and so he had no emotional processing facilities. In that moment, Harri realised he was a human show home. He’d seemed gleaming, and perfect, but the cupboards were empty, glued shut. Nothing would happen if you tried to turn a tap on. What you saw was what you got. All along, he had been telling Harri who he was. Finally, she believed him.

Why Andy? Because he was profoundly, shockingly kind and decent. Because in the past, even Harri had written him off for being too boring, too nice, and he had sensed that she needed a friend, and been that friend, without ever once attempting to get into her knickers. In fact, Harri had caught herself having knicker removal related thoughts about him and felt embarrassed, ashamed. Andy probably didn’t think of her in that way, at all. Was she even his type?

But then, she thought her type was a chiselled, chilly designer outfit addict, a misogynist who could validate her by hating her less than the other girls. It turned out Harri’s type was a man who could never walk past a dog without petting it, someone who frequently gave away all of their loose change to anyone who asked for it, who sang his own words to the Countdown theme, who let her eat egg and chips on her knees on his sofa and laughed when she got ketchup on the carpet.

TBM wouldn’t have understood any of this. But Harri knew how to salt his wound.