‘I’ll give you closure, we’ll role-play.’ She cleared her throat and deepened her voice. ‘Hello, Ros, I’m Patrick. I think I’m really clever because I’ve read a lot of books and written one or two but I’ve actually got the emotional maturity of a shoe and not a very nice one.’

I shook my head and smiled as I walked past a coffee shop, remembering the coffees and pastries he’d brought back to his flat the first morning after the first night before.

‘Do you think he misses me?’ I asked. ‘Do you think that’s why he sent the text?’

‘I don’t know what he’s thinking,’ Sumi admitted. ‘But I do know he broke your heart and I’m not down for you to give him a chance to do it again.’

‘Probably just being nice,’ I reasoned. ‘Replying out of politeness. I did send him the first text, after all.’

Sumi burst out laughing. ‘Ros. When was Patrick ever nice? Or polite?’

It was a fair point. He was a lot of things but nice wasn’t one of them. But who wanted nice? Nice was just a polite word for boring. Patrick was adventurous and passionate and bold and even though I tried so hard not to, now he was back in my head, I missed him so much I could taste it.

‘It has been a while, what if he’s changed?’

‘He could have been turned into a unicorn that’s been tasked with protecting the Holy Grail and I still wouldn’t think it was a good idea to text him,’ she replied, blunt as ever. ‘You were together six months and it’s taken you three years to get over him. Don’t do this to yourself.’

‘It was nine months,’ I corrected. ‘Almost ten.’

Nine months, twenty-two days and twenty-three hours if we were being precise. Accuracy was important to me.

‘You were together nine months, almost ten,’ Sumi repeated. ‘Then you were offered an amazing job opportunity that didn’t mean you had to break up but he knocked the whole thing on the head without giving it a second thought.’

‘I know,’ I said softly. ‘I was there, I remember.’

‘I just don’t want you to get hurt again,’ Sumi groaned. ‘This is so like him, so casual, so vague. What if you reply, get your hopes up, and then he tells you he’s married with kids?’

The thought of Patrick being legally tied to someone else hit me like a wet haddock. I slowed down in the street, suddenly sick to my stomach.

‘And you already know it’s a bad idea,’ she added, her voice softening slightly. ‘If you’d wanted someone to tell you to text him, you’d have called the soft-touch, not me.’

She meant Lucy. Lucy was, in fairness, very persuadable.