I glanced behind her into the kitchens and saw tall, dark and angry from the night before, deep in conversation with an equally tall, very pretty blonde. ‘Don’t worry,’ I insisted, politely trying to avoid another confrontation. ‘Looks like he’s busy.’

‘With her?’ Camille turned up her tiny nose with ready indiscretion. ‘She won’t be staying long. Fingers crossed.’

‘Girlfriend?’ I asked. They were talking intently but they definitely didn’t give off a colleague vibe.

‘The wife.’ She made little air quotes with her fingers and, from the look on her face, it seemed as though there wasn’t much love lost between them. I couldn’t help but be curious.

‘Does she work here?’

‘Hmm,’ she confirmed, looking over at the two of them as the blonde laughed at something we couldn’t hear. I inched my bag up my shoulder and watched as she picked a fleck of dust from his shoulder. ‘When she feels like it.’

I kept one eye on John and his wife from a safe distance. What if he’d told her how I walked in on him in the bathroom? I was too British to live with that shame. And how was it that they were both so tall? Did they meet on a dating app for giants? Shouldn’t they both be with shorter people to try and share those genes around? Their kitchen had to be amazing, they could both reach all the cupboards. What a gift. Before I realized I was staring, John looked up and caught my eye. I switched my gaze to the menu, boring holes into the heavy paper and reading our selections out to Camille.

‘I’ll have it all out as soon as,’ she said as she tapped it all into the iPad in front of her. ‘Nice to meet you properly, Ros.’

‘Nice to meet you too,’ I said, catching her boss’s eye again and wishing I could say the same for him.

‘Remember when our idea of a dream meal was a fish finger sandwich and an entire box of potato waffles?’ I said loudly, once I was safely back at the table. ‘Oh, to be twenty-two again.’

‘You couldn’t pay me to go back to my twenties,’ Adrian declared. ‘Not for every fish finger on the face of the earth. Too many fuck-ups, too many lessons learned the hard way.’

‘Nor me, I’m so glad life is easier now,’ Sumi agreed, even though she’d taken four Nurofen Plus since she’d arrived and had dark circles under her eyes that would have had Nosferatu asking if she was feeling OK. ‘I couldn’t go through it again. All those hours studying? No one taking you seriously? The five years it took to convince my grandmother I was gay? No thank you.’