There Phillip had been, this very handsome man, with the German inflection which made him sound like a physics genius as imagined by Dan Brown. Speaking, not even in his first language, to a hundred rich tuxedos. ‘At times when the world feels full of conflict, when politics lets us down, art does not become less relevant. It actually becomes more important’. ‘Ect-ually’, he pronounced it. Michaela’s mate saw the way she was looking at Phillip, and smirked, and introduced them on the balcony afterwards. He said that he hoped the speech was OK, he’d been very nervous. It had made her feel powerful to tell him, this man who’d made jokes in three languages, that – yes – the speech had been OK; more than OK, fantastic. She’d noticed he was not wearing a wedding ring. She thought about how, if she’d been there beforehand, she would have made him less nervous. She’d been alarmed by the thoughts. As she took his number, she told herself she would never use it.

But that idea only lasted forty-eight hours. Then she texted him to ask when he was next in London, and it turned out the answer was that Thursday. Again, a surprise. It was a surprise for him to be asking, straight out: ‘So, if you could do anything – if you could have any life right now – what would it be?’ Very little teasing or small talk; none of the flirty preliminaries you might expect with a new person. The way he looked her bang in the eyes, it was as if they had already known each other for five years, as if they were the sort of friends who could pick up after a long absence. It was not just surprising, but alarming, to be thinking about him like this. It was positively alarming that two hours into their first proper drink together, which she prolonged by sending James a series of dishonest texts about ‘meeting a blogger’, she already couldn’t imagine not knowing Phillip.