They argue after that. I shuffle along so Mike can sit down. They push and jab at each other like lads on the playground. And then talk about football and the new sales targets and how useless the security guard is at work. I join in every now and then. Nod in the right places. But I’m thinking about Ian. I can’t help it. That night we met. The same drink. The first year we lived together when he was building the business up. Storing the stock in the spare room. And me doing the books in the evenings. He was all gung-ho and high on ambition. If he could’ve been paid just for talking about it we would’ve been millionaires. I’d get in after work and there’d be no sign of him. Walking through the flat calling his name and I’d feel something on the back of my neck and there he was, creeping behind me with the severed plastic arm from one of the shop dummies. Or another time it was the shape of someone in our bed and him hiding in the wardrobe, waiting for me to lift the covers. He got a kick out of it, out of scaring me shitless and then making up for it after. Falling onto the bed together and the sound of him pushing the naked dummy onto the floor.

‘You’ll give me nightmares, you daft bastard.’

He was kissing my neck, then, fumbling one-handed with my bra strap. Him still laughing and me trying to remember if I’d taken my pill.

‘Please tell me that’s not the only thing you’ve been doing today.’

‘Shhhh,’ he said, ‘shhhh,’ and I wanted to kiss him and kill him in the exact same moment.

‘You’re not Jeremy fucking Beadle, you know.’

‘Let’s get out of here,’ Gary says, and it’s the first piece of sense I’ve heard from him all night.

Mike knows somewhere round the corner with 80s music and cocktails so we rescue Donna from the bar and head across the square.

‘I deserve better,’ she keeps saying to anyone who’ll listen, ‘I’m not just a piece of meat.’

‘You’re beautiful,’ Mike says, ‘You’re an absolute catch. Now lean on my arm and shut the fuck up.’

Gary is singing Electric Dreams. He takes me in a ballroom hold and I’m not drunk enough yet but I can’t be bothered to fight it. We trot across the road. All those dance classes in the church hall. I knew they’d come in handy one day. His hand too tight across my back. But he can hold a tune. I’ll give him that. We’ll always be together, he sings, however far it seems, and Mike is on backing vocals and Donna is laughing and my throat is dry. I need something sweet to keep me going.