My first match is Geoff, a 33-year-old vet. He has a nice smile, and…neatly trimmed pubes. For all I know, Geoff exists and is out there meeting some other naked Imogen right now, in a smart Mayfair hotel. But I am in Mitcham, alone in bed, writing on my phone with my head under the duvet. Geoff is very friendly, and…I can’t do this. I want to cry. I want to quit. I want to call Louise. I’ve deliberately been very vague with her about the naked speed dating—well, about the fact that I had no intention of going.

‘Maybe you’ll meet the love of your life?’ she’d said, hopefully. ‘Maybe this is the answer we’ve all been waiting for!’

‘Yeah…no. I don’t think that’s likely.’

‘You know what they say. You’ll find him when you’re not looking!’ Louise looked so dreamy and excited that I briefly thought I might have found a solution to my woes.

‘Why don’t you go? Who knows—you might meet the one.’

Louise shook her head violently. ‘No way am I brave enough for naked speed dating. And I don’t like dating, you know that.’

I didn’t, actually. ‘But don’t you want to meet someone eventually?’

‘Not now. My twenties are all about establishing my career and meeting my professional goals. I told you about my five year plan! I’ve got to be an editor by the time I’m thirty, and then I can date.’

When Louise once told me her dream man was Eric from The Little Mermaid, I thought she was joking. But maybe she just doesn’t do men in 3D. I didn’t know what to say.

‘But you’re already an editor. You’re our entertainment editor.’

‘Not just a section editor! Editor in Chief. Not of The Know, necessarily, but somewhere.’

‘By the time you’re thirty?’ I didn’t want to say it out loud, but Lou’s goal meant being promoted about nine times in roughly six months.

‘That’s why I don’t date! No time,’ said Louise, as though she was explaining to me why she didn’t walk on railway lines or eat from dustbins.

Sometimes I think that the only people who are actually dating are journalists desperate for something to write about. But the data claims that The Girl dates, cheerfully and fearlessly. According to the media pack, The Girl is a bloody nymphomaniac. I don’t believe Harri, or even Akila. If The Girl is real, she isn’t out there, confidently and dispassionately inspecting testicles. She’s probably in a single bed, like me, with her head under the duvet, certain that everyone else in the world is out having fun without her.