‘Amazing that you’re both single now you’re back,’ he said. ‘Maybe it’s meant to be.’

‘Maybe.’ I searched my brain for something clever but came up with nothing. Patrick would have had the perfect literary quote ready to go. ‘I still feel like I’m playing catch-up. Who knows where we might be now if I’d never left?’

The girl from the sofa practically skipped past our table on her way to the toilet, leaving the boy to stare after her and then, the second she was out of sight, chug his entire glass of water. Utterly hammered.

‘You need two people to try to make a relationship work,’ John said. ‘I’m sure you weren’t entirely to blame, these things don’t usually work like that.’

‘Perhaps,’ I replied with a forced smile that I hoped made clear I didn’t want to talk about it. ‘I know, I know, all relationships are difficult.’

‘In my experience, when a man wants to be with someone,’ John said, breathing in deeply. ‘He will do everything in his power to make it happen.’

I watched his face, a wistful smile slipping away into something more regretful and, suddenly, I wondered where his wife was tonight.

He set down his wine glass and gave me a look. ‘I might have a whisky, do you want a whisky?’

Something in the air shifted, a tension that had dissipated suddenly rallied, separating us again.

‘No, thank you,’ I replied politely, treading carefully around his raw nerve. ‘Whisky and I don’t get along terribly well.’

‘That’s a shame,’ he said as he stood. ‘Me and a good bottle of Scotch are closer than those two lately.’

He looked over at the pink sofa where the girl had returned from the toilets and the boy was attempting to excavate her tonsils with his tongue.

‘Young love,’ I said, grossed-out and charmed in equal measures. ‘You can’t beat it.’

‘Except with a stick,’ John replied before folding his napkin and laying it neatly on the table. ‘Excuse me.’

I watched the two of them going at it on the sofa until it felt indecent, which didn’t take very long at all. All smiles and hands and red cheeks, they dumped notes and coins on the table before hurrying off into the night, holding the door open for someone as they left.

‘You’re a sight for sore eyes,’ Patrick said, striding through the bar in his charcoal-grey trousers and white linen shirt. He leaned down and planted a firm kiss on my lips, his mouth warm and wet, alcohol on his breath. Without asking, he sat himself down in John’s empty chair. ‘Christ, I thought dinner would never end, thank you so much for waiting.’

‘I totally forgot you were coming,’ I admitted, searching the bar for John. Nowhere to be found.