I shook my head. I had decided it was best not to tell her about our conversation or about the kiss. There was nothing to tell so there was no point. It wasn’t fair to put her in the middle of a thing that didn’t even exist. But on the other hand, if I didn’t tell her, I would explode then and there in the middle of the café and that would create such a mess for someone to clean up.

‘I hope you can live with yourself, knowing you missed out on a thrilling fucking game of Stick the Pin on the Nappy,’ she said, glancing over at the next table where a woman with a sleeping baby strapped to her chest was spooning frozen yoghurt into her mouth, over the top of the baby’s head. ‘It was a lot, I don’t blame you for leaving, but you could have told me before you vanished. I’m still technically pissed off with you.’

‘I could have and I’m sorry,’ I agreed. ‘I’m a shit.’

‘Yes, you are, but luckily for you, I need to talk to you about something.’ She piled her long black hair back over her shoulder, the annoyance fading from her face. ‘Lucy enjoyed it though? I think she did.’

‘She definitely did,’ I said. I frowned as she pulled her phone out again, opened her emails and threw it back in her bag. She seemed too tense for someone about to eat their body weight in frozen dairy delights. ‘Sumi, what’s wrong?’

‘Evening, ladies,’ the waiter came back around, pen and paper at the ready. ‘What can I get you?’

Sumi looked up and stared at me, big brown eyes wide open and entirely serious.

‘I want to have a baby.’

‘I’ll come back in a minute,’ the waiter replied.

‘Please come back with two large glasses of white wine,’ I said.

‘We don’t serve wine,’ he said quietly. ‘Why don’t I bring you some fro-yo samples while you work out what you’d like?’ Before I could respond, he ran across the café floor and disappeared behind the wall of frozen yoghurt dispensers.

‘What are you talking about?’ I said, resting my forearms on the table and leaning towards her. ‘You’ve never mentioned wanting kids before, what’s going on? Talk to me.’

‘Ros, I’m older than you,’ she began.

‘You’re two years older than me,’ I reminded her. ‘You literally just turned thirty-five ten days ago.’