‘That’s hardly a secret now, is it?’ Patrick said, glancing down at her protruding belly. ‘But I understand. Baby names are sacred. I was the only person who knew my nephew’s names until they were born and I never told a soul.’

Maybe you should have, I thought to myself. Could have spared them eighteen years of schoolyard bullying.

‘Ohh, Dave would kill me but I am dying to get it off my chest,’ Lucy squeaked, looking around the room for potential witnesses. Apparently I didn’t count. ‘You’re sure you won’t tell anyone?’

Patrick crossed himself and leaned in as she wrapped her fingers around his ears.

It was unreal. Two weeks ago, she would have pushed him under a bus as soon as look at him and now she was about to confide her super special secret baby names to Patrick bloody Parker.

‘I might go and get a drink,’ I said, rolling my eyes as they gasped and giggled at each other.

‘I’ll take a whisky if you’re going in there,’ Patrick called as I walked away. ‘Thanks, Ros.’

‘“I’ll take a whisky if you’re going in there”,’ I parroted as I let myself into the cigar room, immediately choking on the thick, Cuban fug. It was every bit as awful as I’d imagined it might be. Leather recliners, tall bookcases, a poor woman in Mad Men cosplay, tasked with cutting and lighting the cigars, who looked about ready to throw herself through the window. I hoped she was being well paid.

‘Ahoy there, Ros,’ Creepy Dave crowed from his oxblood throne. ‘What are you doing in my lair? Husband-hunting?’

His assembled minions all guffawed while looking me up and down. Their wives must be so proud.

‘I’m sorry, I appear to have walked into 1952 by mistake,’ I replied, pouring a small glass of whisky and shooting it straight back. Bleurgh. It was incredible that you couldn’t smell this hovel in the main room, Sumi must have rented every air purifier in London.

‘We’ll let you stay,’ Creepy Dave’s brother, Weird Dean, said. ‘But only if you sing us a song.’

I took another swig of whisky before turning to face him.

‘OK,’ I replied. ‘Roses are red, violets are blue, you’re an arsehole, shut up.’

‘Was that a haiku?’ asked a voice in the corner. It was John, perched on a ledge by the bookcase. My lips parted to speak but my throat seized up at the memory of last night and everything slowed down for just a moment. His body against mine, his arms around me. And then I remembered he was married and I had a boyfriend and the world came hurtling towards me fast.

‘Not quite,’ I said, thinking for a moment and counting the syllables on my fingers. ‘That would be, roses can be red, violets are often blue, shut up you arsehole.’