Panjabi MC comes on over the speakers and everyone in the bar cheers, except Box Room Bethany who mouths, ‘How many times?’ and mimics hanging herself.

A tacky big-faced watch glints on Lewis’s wrist; he looks like one of those ridiculous American rappers. It’s exactly what Yvonne needs to see to prove her impression of him is right. ‘Love this track,’ he says while bopping his head.

‘Finally,’ Emma shouts as the barman puts down a paper boat of chips in the middle of the table. ‘I ordered these fries ages ago. Shit, this is a big portion. Guys, help me out, save me the hassle of puking it all up later.’

Stools are pulled from other tables as more people join and it quickly becomes one of those group conversations where bits and pieces get lost in sound, where you catch some of one topic, none of another. Lewis stifles a yawn and coils Emma’s hair around his fingers till she turns to him.

‘So, Lewis,’ Box Room Bethany says. ‘Are you studying?’

‘No. Studying wasn’t really my thing.’ He explains how he could never have afforded it and didn’t need it to set up his men’s fashion label anyway. The label. Of course. Yvonne’s heard some of this spiel before. ‘Street fashion for the modern man’, ‘limited-run T-shirts with a message’. They’d been standing outside The Troika bar that night surrounded by ravenous drunks demolishing kebabs, and he had stunned her with his ambitions.

‘I’m all about doing something for real, you know,’ he says. ‘I’m not one of those people who sit around talking about how to change things. I’m more about making it happen.’ Everyone nods along even Box Room Bethany whose sole purpose in life is to sit around complaining about not being able to change things.

‘T-shirts are hardly going to revolutionise the world,’ Yvonne says.

‘Yeah, well, no, course not. But it’s a start. My label’s like a stepping stone to other things I want to do. Music. Art. Marketing. I like to have my fingers in lots of different pies.’ He holds her gaze steady, challenging her and she can’t rise to it.

‘Well,’ Emma shouts, ‘Yvonne and I are also going to change the world.’

Yvonne cringes, she doesn’t want Emma telling him their plans, the things they discuss when it’s the two of them, their bright-eyed ideas to save the world. She tries to get Emma’s attention from across the table.

‘Oh no, is this your Crayons for Kenyans company idea again?’ scoffs Bethany. ‘As if anything is ever going to offset your parents drilling oil from the ocean floor.’

‘Whatever,’ Emma laughs, but it’s a sore point, the fact that despite her self-righteousness she can never win an argument on ethics because her parents work for an oil company.

Lewis smiles, ‘So, tell me about this idea then?’