‘Are you lost?’ she asks, shuffling her seated self closer to the table, finding her question rather hilarious. I don’t answer. I mean, I’m not seven years old in Tesco looking for my mum. She stares at me brazenly, amazed at – well, I don’t know – something. Me? She’s looking amazed at me. One thing’s for sure – she also doesn’t have a fucking clue who I am. So I hover, trying to get Ross’s attention.

‘You’re blocking the stage,’ the girl says, thinking she’s made another joke.

‘There’s nobody on the stage,’ I tell her.

‘Oh, you know what I mean!’ God, this one takes posh to next level. I mean, we’re talking royalty. Clipped, Keira Knightley posh. Like, even when your family are killed in a massacre, you smile and talk through your teeth because you’re bloody well English, and that’s how the English bloody well deal with it, sort of posh. To think I’d thought we could be mates.

Florrie is waving me over.

‘Goodbye!’ I say to the girl, unable to resist putting on my best Queen’s English.

‘Don’t talk to Minty, talk to me!’ Florrie cries. Florrie and Minty. Sounds like a kids’ telly programme from the seventies with sock puppets. God knows what Minty is short for. If she was from Liverpool, she’d only get called Minty if she had bad breath.

Unlike Minty, Florrie stands to talk to me. ‘Was she awful to you, Chloe?’

‘Who? Minty?’

‘It’s all a facade. She’s got a heart of pure gold, that one.’

‘Sure.’

‘But Chloe – we’re all super keen to know your story. You were the first girlfriend Jack had … since me. And that was a long, long time ago. Like a hundred million years.’

‘How long, really?’

‘Erm …’ Florrie’s eyes shoot into her brain. ‘Fifteen, no sixteen years. Maybe seventeen. Fuck, how old am I?’

‘Dunno? Thirty-eight?’

‘Eek. I’m sozzled. I was so nervous for Rossy. We heard rumours that the Beeb were in tonight. I really didn’t want him to fuck up. He can be so hit-and-miss, don’t you think?’

‘I enjoyed it.’

‘But what did you think?’ Florrie closes one eye, pouts. The open eye flickers, the rest of her is statue-still. I should prod her, see if she tips over. ‘Benji-doo! Benja-min! Can you talk to Chloe? I need the loo. Ah-gain!’

And whoosh. She’s gone.

Benji-bloody-doo-dah makes a gross gesture for me to sit on his knee. I avoid any expression. Really, there isn’t one suitable. He jumps up, apologises, plays with an unlit cigarette, puts it behind his ear. He’s very sorry.

‘I’m a total dick. These things give you the impression that any fucker can be funny, but well, I prove that theory wrong.’

‘It’s fine.’

‘So, what am I supposed to be filling you in on? How can I help?’