‘It’s been five months, Lewis, five months of listening to nothing but this monotonous crap,’ she shouts over the music.

He laughs and shakes his head. ‘And what are you talking about five months?’ he asks. ‘Today’s our half year anniversary.’

She doesn’t even try to count back in her head knowing that while Lewis is the kind of person to forget what time of day he arranged to meet someone, he’s obsessive about dates, recalling the years certain albums were released or football games were played.

‘Half a year,’ she says. ‘Do I get a trophy?’

Six months to make up for all those they spent apart. The back story doesn’t matter. In the future when people ask how they met she will simply say, ‘at a club,’ or ‘from around Soho.’ And the fact that he has a child with a friend of hers, an old friend, won’t matter. Families are complicated these days. Maybe in time Kiama will visit them both. It could happen, will happen soon. She just has to deal with Emma first.

Eventually the road becomes a lane and they park by a wooden toadstool with a discreet sign which reads ‘The Luck Hut’.

‘Here we are,’ he says. ‘Welcome to The Fuck Hut, honey.’

‘Don’t call it that.’

‘Sorry. It was a joke.’ There’s a slight chill outside and it’s drizzling a little, as Yvonne knew it would be, but it’s just weather, what does it matter? They’re together, alone, and away from everything.

Inside the pale pink round hut, she sits on the sofa with a glass of wine while he explores the bedroom and bathroom, shouting through comments like, ‘Free slippers, you think we can keep them?’ and ‘Molton Brown in here, no rubbish.’

She always used to think of Lewis as much cooler than her, more sophisticated and worldly, so it had surprised her when she began getting to know him again properly to find out he wasn’t. But it was almost endearing to hear him emit a quiet whistle at the prices in a restaurant or say things like ‘how the other half lives’. It was so far from the uber-confident player she was crazy about at twenty-one.

‘This place is great,’ he says. He lifts the TV remote from the table. ‘Ah, it’s got Sky too. Who cares about the weather? We don’t need to leave all weekend.’

She grabs the remote from his hand and switches it off. ‘We’ve not driven all this way to watch TV.’

‘Course not. It’s called The Fuck Hut for a reason.’

‘Please, stop calling it that.’

‘I’m kidding.’

Outside, the wind changes direction and rain pelts the window.

‘I thought this was going to be romantic,’ she says, slightly annoyed by him.

‘Romantic?’ he mocks. ‘Is that what you want from me?’