I looked up at him from under my hair. ‘It’s not an exciting story,’ I said, the words itching to come out. ‘It’s nothing dramatic. Which almost makes it worse.’

John shrugged and swept his arm across the table, giving me the floor.

‘I got sacked,’ I said quietly but clearly. The first time I’d said it out loud since I got back. ‘Clever little Ros went off to America, gave up my job, gave up my friends, gave up my boyfriend and, when I got there, I couldn’t hack it and I got sacked.’

He poured another trickle of wine into my glass. ‘These things happen, why so secretive?’

‘Because I’m embarrassed!’ I exclaimed, almost ready to laugh. I couldn’t believe he was just brushing it off like that. ‘Who gets sacked these days? I was mortified.’

‘How come?’ he asked. ‘How come they sacked you?’

‘Because I wasn’t good enough,’ I replied, picking up my glass and then putting it down. A hangover tomorrow morning wouldn’t help. ‘They were making cutbacks and they brought me in and explained how they were promoting my assistant and letting me go. They felt as though there had been a “marked decline” in my work. Apparently.’

‘Was there?’ he asked.

‘Probably,’ I admitted. ‘I hated it.’

It felt good to say it out loud.

‘You hated the job?’

I watched as the man who had sat beside me at the bar packed away his typewriter, drained his third glass of tap water, emptied his second bowl of free nuts and got up to leave.

‘Living in a different country was fun at first, everyone came to visit, everything was a novelty,’ I explained. ‘But I never really made friends there, not like the friends I’ve got here. And the job was a lot, I was working all the time, every evening, every weekend. By the end it was literally work, home, sleep, work, home, sleep. And the whole time, I could see everyone else’s lives going on back here without me. I missed it so much.’

‘You could have moved back, no one would have thought any less of you,’ he said kindly.

‘I thought if I stuck it out, it would get better,’ I said. ‘I thought I would get used to it and stop feeling so down all the time but I didn’t.’

He offered a warm half smile but didn’t respond, just waited for me to get the rest of it out.