At exactly five thirty, I switched my casual Friday Converse for a pair of black patent heels, checked my concealer, closed up my computer and bolted for the door. Patrick had rented some obscure French movie from his very cool video club and we had made plans to watch it at mine. After leaving the tennis club, I’d spent all evening pimping the place out to prepare for his arrival: new sheets, new wine glasses, knock-off Jo Malone candles I’d sent Mum all the way to Aldi to procure. As long as I kept the light low and the smell of the compostable toilet out of the bedroom, I truly believed I could pass off my current predicament as sexily bohemian. And if the candles weren’t enough to distract him, I’d also spent my following week’s food budget on a pair of stockings and suspenders that were definitely more six-star hotel suite than one-star shed. I needed about three hours to get into them but it would be worth it.

I was fifteen minutes into a mindless run around the M&S Foodhall when my phone rang with Patrick’s name lighting up the screen.

‘Hey, hi,’ I beamed. ‘I was just thinking about you.’

‘Warm thoughts, I hope,’ he replied. ‘What time are you coming over tonight?’

I dropped a packet of prosciutto in my trolley and frowned.

‘I thought you were coming to me?’

‘Really? I thought you were coming here,’ he said. ‘I was going to make you dinner.’

‘I was going to make you dinner,’ I countered, hand hovering over a pre-packaged cheese selection. ‘You said you’d come to me because it’s Lucy’s baby shower tomorrow and it’s easier to get there from my place. Remember?’

He gave a long groan of recognition. ‘Ohhh, the baby shower is tomorrow? I thought that was next week? My brain is like a sieve.’

‘Lucy’s baby shower is this weekend,’ I confirmed. ‘Next weekend is my mum and dad’s vow renewal.’

‘And what’s the weekend after that?’ he laughed. ‘Your milkman’s cousin’s bar mitzvah?’

‘The weekend after that is my birthday,’ I said quietly, putting back the cheese.

‘I know that, I’m just joking,’ Patrick replied. ‘You sound tired. Why don’t you come here tonight and let me look after you?’

‘Because you said you’d come to mine,’ I said in as hushed a tone as I could manage. I would not be one of those women who had a full-volume slanging match on the phone in the supermarket. At least not in M&S, what would my mother think? ‘Come on, Patrick, it’s going to be nice, I was going to buy cheese?’

I would not give in. He was coming to my shed if I had to drug him and drag him and that was almost definitely illegal or, at the very least, frowned upon.