‘The Dream List is for when I’m married. And nowhere on there does it have popping open my top because it’s too tight, or letting my dog run about with my underwear.’

‘It’ll make a great story for my chief bridesmaid’s speech.’ She giggled, before pushing a blueberry lemon muffin under my nose. ‘Come on, eat this, I’m supposed to be watching my calories.’

At which point I remembered that my best friend had genuine problems, not least that her dad was recently out of prison for the umpteenth time and had been contacting her brother Simeon, and that her mum was drinking too much again.

‘So, enough of my gut-wrenching problems, what’s next on the list?’ Steph asked, once she’d cried about the mess that was her parents, and then cried again when she proudly told me how her brother Jordan had decided to specialise in oncology.

‘Ugh. I can’t even think about that stupid list, let alone choose something. A romantic night in was supposed to be the easiest thing on there.’

‘Come on, then, hand it over.’ She held out her hand.

‘It’s an A3 sheet; I don’t carry it about with me.’

‘So you’re telling me you don’t have a picture on your phone?’

Sighing, I scrolled through to the photo and passed her my phone.

Steph pursed her lips as she scanned the list. ‘Number six.’

‘Number six?’

‘Yes. You need to do something bold and brazen to get your confidence back.’

‘I don’t think I’m ready to sit in a restaurant that posh by myself.’ Item six had started out as a meal in one of Nottingham’s stuffiest restaurants, but when that closed down a year earlier I’d updated it to Hatherstone Hall. Originally opening up as a wedding venue, its boutique restaurant had swiftly garnered a reputation as the most exclusive eatery in the county. When a well-known Nottingham actor had proposed to his girlfriend there a few weeks earlier, it had been unofficially crowned the ultimate romantic place to dine.

I squinted at her. ‘Eating in a restaurant on your own by choice, knowing you have friends to eat with if you wanted, is one thing. Eating alone because you have no one else to ask is a whole different matter.’

‘Ollie, you have friends – and family – who would love to eat out with you. Not that long ago Boring Mark specifically asked you to eat in a restaurant with him. That’s not the point of this.’

‘I know.’ I wriggled awkwardly on her breakfast bench. ‘Maybe I’ll do some of the other out-and-about things on the list first, and have a couple of incidental meals with other people, then I’ll feel okay about getting pitiful looks from the waiter when I blow a day’s wages going to an expensive restaurant on my own.’