‘Now, you go home and relax, put your feet up, have a bubble bath or something and I’ll see you tomorrow. Don’t worry about coming over here, I’ll be fine on my own. I’ll meet you at the party whenever you want me there.’

I looked down at my high heels and thought about the twenty minutes I’d spent applying false eyelashes in the PodPad toilets and about the stockings and suspenders, wedged on top of the bathroom cabinet in the shed. What a waste.

‘I’ll miss you tonight though,’ Patrick murmured, chasing away my annoyance.

‘Good,’ I told him, my annoyance building again as he laughed down the line. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

My phone beeped to confirm he’d ended the call.

Tears welled up in my eyes as I stared into the cheese fridge. I had two choices. One, fill my basket with dairy delights, go home and try not to make eye contact with my redundant lingerie. Or, two, abandon my shopping and find an adventure.

‘It’s Friday, I’m wearing false eyelashes and cheese backs me up,’ I accidentally declared to an unsuspecting shelf stocker. ‘Time for an adventure.’

‘It gives me the runs,’ clucked a little old lady at the side of me. ‘You get off out while you’re young.’ She picked up a block of Wensleydale and looked me up and down. ‘Well, fairly young.’

And there it was, decision made.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked Sumi, clambering out of the taxi and following her blindly down an alleyway. ‘Why won’t you tell me?’

‘Because if I tell you, you won’t want to do it and I’ll let you talk me out of it and we’ll end up at mine, completely rat-arsed, you whining about Patrick, me buying shoes I can’t afford and both of us hungover for the baby shower tomorrow,’ she replied. Sumi had thought this through.

‘I will want to do it,’ I promised even though I clearly had no way of knowing if that was in fact true. ‘It doesn’t matter what it is.’

She marched on, lips firmly clamped together.

‘Is it a quiz night?’

No response. It was a fair guess though, Sumi loved quizzes. Mostly because she was much cleverer than anyone else in the world and quiz nights were the only place she could really let that light shine without feeling like an arse.

‘Immersive theatre experience where we all have to pretend we’re squirrels?’

I could have sworn I’d read about that happening somewhere round here on Time Out.

‘Lesbian board game night?’

‘What’s a lesbian board game?’ she asked.

‘Monopoly but instead of buying property and going to prison you buy Birkenstocks and have to go to Ikea.’