‘So things are going well with Tom. We seemed to have hit it off brilliantly. Just sort of clicked, you know?’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Cath replies.

‘So, come on. What did you think of him? Honestly.’

‘Honestly? Well, I didn’t really get to see much of him. I thought his reaction was a bit… weird.’

‘Yeah, sorry about that. It was all a bit of a misunderstanding. I don’t think he took the comment about the exes too well. Between you and me, he was married before. She took off with the kid and all their money.’

‘Jesus.’

‘Yeah. Don’t tell him I said anything, will you? It’s not something he likes to talk about, for obvious reasons.’

‘Of course not. I won’t say a thing. He knows I was only messing around, right? And that I didn’t know any of that?’

‘Yeah, he does. He already said he was sorry. Just one of those things. Must’ve caught him in a bad mood.’

‘Well hopefully I’ll catch him in a better mood next time.’

‘You will. I was thinking, maybe we can sort something out on that front. I was thinking about organising a night out or a meal or something. For the friends, I mean. It’s been so long since we’ve caught up, and we only ever seem to do weddings and christenings.’

‘There’s the barbecue coming up.’

I chuckle. ‘True. Might be nice to do something before that, though. Something that isn’t just part of the annual routine.’

The barbecue is an odd tradition, but definitely one of my favourites. One of our friends, Gareth, moved here from Australia a few years ago. He mentioned one time how Christmas in Australia was so different — mainly because it was the middle of summer over there. He said he missed having a barbecue on the beach, which was his traditional equivalent of our Christmas dinner. Ever since then, it’s been our own annual tradition for a group of us to head to the seaside on the weekend before Christmas. It’s always absolutely freezing cold, but that’s part of the fun. It means we all get a short trip away, it gives us an excuse to catch up and Gareth gets his barbecue on the beach. We tend to get a few odd looks from passers by, but we have a lot of fun. The location changes every year, but this year it’s Brighton.

‘I’ll arrange something,’ I say, stirring my drink with my straw. ‘If you’re up for it, that is. Doesn’t need to be anything big. Just a meal in a local pub somewhere. We should all make more of an effort to see each other.’

‘Sounds good to me,’ Cath says, shrugging her shoulders. ‘You’re not going to hear me complaining about a pub lunch. At least it makes all the “we should do this again soon” platitudes seem less false.’

‘In fact, it’d be good to do that fairly soon, because I’ve been having a think about asking him to move in with me.’