I think that was meant to be reassuring. And if I’d been investing in a stock portfolio, it might have been. Or maybe I was unreassurable right now. After all, part of the reason I’d asked James Royce-Royce to come with me, instead of anyone else I could have asked, is that I knew I could rely on him to give me an opinion that wasn’t overbearingly romantic (like Bridget or James Royce-Royce) or crushingly cynical (like Priya or, well, me).

“Come on, then,” I said with about as much conviction as I could summon. “Let’s put a ring on it. By which I mean buy a ring that I can give to Oliver, which he can wear if he wants. Maybe. If it doesn’t need resizing, which it probably will.”

Pushing open the door, we stepped into that churchy hush that all jewellers seemed to cultivate, as if they were trying to instil a sense of inadequacy that could be dispelled only by spending more than you could afford.

I was instilled with a sense of inadequacy.

And my credit was nowhere near good enough to dispel it.

To quell my rising panic, I peered into one of the counters, as if I knew what the fuck I was doing. Except I didn’t. I wasn’t even looking at rings.

“Can I help you, sir?”

I looked up to see a slender, ashen-faced man in a three-piece suit who somehow looked like he had a pencil moustache, while also being completely clean-shaven. “Um,” I said. “Um.”

The unaccountably intimidating shop assistant folded his hands behind his back. “And what might sir be looking for?”

Somehow, he made sir sound like an insult.

“I guess,” I tried. “Um. A ring?”

“Estate? Eternity? Wedding? Puzzle? Promise? Semi-mount? Signet? Cocktail? Cluster? Claddagh?”

Oh my God, I’d walked into the lair of the riddling jeweller. Any second now he was going to say, My first is in diamond, but isn’t in heart. “Engagement,” I squeaked.

“Ah.” In one syllable, he managed to express more disappointment than any of my schoolteachers or university lecturers had ever managed.

I visibly cringed. “Is that okay?”

Without another word, he bent at the waist and drew forth a velvet tray that he laid in front of me very much with the air of someone casting pearls before swine.

Which, as it turned out, he definitely was. Because, looking at the price tags, I couldn’t afford anything.

“Do you,” I asked, with a disproportionate amount of shame for someone who, at the end of the day, was still about to shell out about five hundred quid in his guy’s shop, “by any chance have anything…cheaper?”

The man cleared his throat and took way too long replacing the tray of shit I couldn’t afford with a tray of twenty-five-pound cubic-zirconia tat.