‘Long day?’ he asked.

‘Yeah, a bit,’ even though it’s not the sort of thing you should normally admit on a first date. ‘More weird than long.’

‘How so?’

Petra didn’t want to invite the spectre of that poor woman with her swollen eyes to this table right now – the weight of that reality was too much of a downer. ‘Oh, no real reason. I think I’ve started to lose my mind. I’ve started to hallucinate.’ She said it like a joke, which she supposed it was.

‘I’m having the mushrooms next time,’ he said. When he saw she wasn’t going to say any more, he said, ‘I had some weirdness today, too.’

‘Tell me.’

‘I won a prize for a contest I don’t remember entering.’

Petra laughed. ‘Yeah, and I bet you have to email your bank account details and PIN to claim it, right? I’ve won that prize a few times myself.’

‘That’s what I thought, but this one’s legit.’

‘Seriously? Don’t tell me you clicked through.’

‘No clicking involved. It was in a letter, hand-addressed, to my door.’

Petra took a sip, leaned forward. ‘Really? What was inside?’

‘Tickets. For a show.’

‘What, like cinema tickets? A concert?’

‘It’s three shows, actually. I’ve got no idea what it is, but it’s something called Metamuse.’

‘Metamuse? Are you kidding me?’

5 There is no queue outside La Rustica at 7:30, no evidence that a show is happening in the somewhat upmarket Italian restaurant on Regent Street. You’ve eaten here once before, a special-occasion meal to celebrate a graduation or a promotion, and when you are ushered inside, the decor is familiar – overbrushed velvet on the banquettes and drapes and hand-painted scenes of Umbria on the walls, dents of plaster and scratches of previous diners’ love-declaring graffiti. It’s a comforting familiarity because you’re suddenly nervous of being out with this person. This show is a stupid choice for an official first date – so many potential traps, so many possible ways to make a fool of yourself.

The man at the front desk checks your names on the guest list, nods and smiles and then asks you for your phones. The invitation detailed the strict no-phone, no-recording, no-uploading, no-nothing policy, and you’ve been prepared to cede your phone, but still it feels like an invasive and risky demand.

Your table is in an alcove towards the back of the restaurant and you glance at the other paired-up guests as you pass – mothers and daughters, friends, colleagues, and a scattering of more established couples than you.

The trappings of a perfectly ordinary dinner date to start with. Mood music, soft temperature, a martini as an aperitif. The only glaring indicator that this is a Metamuse fabrication are the headphones you’re instructed to put on.

Set up on the table between you is a board game of sorts, like chess with fewer squares and large abstract pieces made of scented wax. The voice in your ears instructs you how to move your pieces as you drink your cocktail. You get the feeling that you’re being calibrated – monitored. You figure out the cat-and-mouse pattern of the game that consists of about fifteen minutes of intense, flirtatious avoidance, eventually culminating in you and your date touching fingers over the last piece. The little action is charged after all the evasion, and the wax piece is beginning to soften, the combined heat of your hands moulding it and turning it into an imprint of the space between you, the notches where your bodies might fit.