Could we take this further? Would that do it? Or was that more like what the cops would say if they’d pulled you over? So much of his English was from movies; it was impossible to judge tone. He couldn’t tell, if this was a romcom, whether he was the hero – destined to end up with Steffi after exactly ninety minutes and three well-spaced mishaps – or if he was the decoy, the charmless barista she escaped from to meet the actual hero.

Well, he was going to have to make a move pretty soon, because before very long he would be back in work all over again; this endless day would send him back to the restaurant like someone in that board game who kept going to jail. Christ, it was going to be a tough eight hours. The brunches and then – because it was the weekend – the roasts, with those weird huge dry ‘puddings’ smothering the wilted spinach and greens. Having to do a separate load of vegan gravy because everyone was vegan now. But he couldn’t afford a slip-up, even a small one. He wanted that sous position so much. He realized the truth of the thought as it formed, grasped it for the first time. I want to be the sous. I am a great cook. I am better than Juno. I should be in that job. He was better than all those people who never replied to his WhatsApp message. He was going to surprise them all. It would be like that film about the Romans he’d seen, where the quiet one, the outsider, let all the big names stab each other in the arse – some of them literally – until he was left as Emperor.

He found a towel in a cupboard. He hoped it wasn’t one of hers; it looked like a man’s, he thought. He dried himself with the dead man’s towel and looked in the mirror at his wet, matted hair. It suited him, wet hair. The one time Arantxa had almost agreed to be ‘more than friends’ was when they’d got caught in a storm. He’d been unlucky it had stopped raining just when he was about to put his hand down her top. Emil looked at himself with approval. The shower had done its work. He would go in there and ask Steffi if he could kiss her. Just kiss her on the back of her neck while her keen beautiful eyes kept patrolling the screen. Just on the top of the head, even. They’d see where it went from there. And in four hours he would go into work and smash it. Like always. Keep narrowing the gap on people who didn’t even know he was right behind them.