Matteo looks inside the pot as if this is a surprise. ‘It does?’

‘Yes,’ Maddy says, taking a picture, then quickly adjusting it and holding it up. She’s been posting random things on her feed, constantly trying to make connections between her daily life and the aspirational lifestyle she’s been promoting, but it’s becoming rather desperate. Trying to be profound about ‘stuff’ whilst making out that she’s living an aesthetically pleasing life is a strain to say the least.

She turns around her phone.

‘See? It looks good enough to eat,’ she says. ‘Shall I tag you in?’

‘Oh, no,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘I don’t do all that social media stuff.’

‘You don’t … you mean, you don’t have any accounts?’

‘I did, but I deleted them all. I can’t really see the point. I’m shy and it just made me stressed. And I had friends who fell out on Twitter. I think it’s killing language – everything reduced to soundbites. There’s no room for humour, or tone, or … what’s the word … no … new?’ He screws up his face trying to remember.

‘Nuance?’

‘Nuance. That’s it. And also, I think my girlfriend’s – ex’s’ – he corrects himself – ‘problems were to do with being online too much. She had eating disorders and …’ He sighs and shrugs. ‘I personally believe her obsession with Instagram made it so, so much worse. It killed her self-esteem constantly comparing herself to other people. I really don’t understand what’s so good about it.’

Maddy feels chastened by this honest appraisal. She knows her own self-esteem is damaged by the constant comparison too, but hearing this reminder from Matteo about the real dangers of social media is sobering. Because she’s guilty of being an addict too, isn’t she? The thought that he might think less of her because of it is enough to make her put away her phone and resolve not to get it out again in his company.

They chat easily and soon they’re on to the subject of her hunt for Jamie and Matteo seems genuinely sorry that she hasn’t been able to find him yet. She finds herself telling him about seeing his friends online and how much it hurts that they’ve all moved on.

She tells him the details about Jamie’s trip to Thailand and what terrible shape he’d been in afterwards. She describes the tense atmosphere at home and how it had come to a head last January. She shudders when she remembers the row and how Jamie had snapped one evening after dinner, when he’d taken Trent’s pleas to change his lifestyle so personally. He’d lashed out at them both, telling them they were useless parents.

Trent was furious, but she was more hurt. She remembers crying and telling Jamie over and over that he didn’t mean it, but he kept on, his words increasingly vicious, as he screamed in her face that he hated everything she stood for. Trent tried to make him apologise, of course, but Jamie turned his fury on Trent and it got physical very quickly. She remembers how she tried to break it up. When Trent punched Jamie, his black eye had appeared almost instantly.