Miles walks over and places a drink in front of me, and I introduce him to the boys before he sits down on my other side, his arm resting on my back.

‘Miles, you look like the kind of guy who’s played pub golf in his day,’ says Douglas.

‘I may have partaken in the odd round.’

‘“Par” taken.’ Douglas high-fives him. ‘I like what you did there.’

It takes Miles a second to get his unintentional pun and he looks rather pleased with himself.

‘You see, Miles is all for it, so I really think we’re onto a winner.’

‘I think it sounds like fun,’ says Verity, clapping her hands together enthusiastically. ‘But don’t we need scorecards?’

‘I borrowed a pen and paper from the barmaid.’ Douglas holds them up.

‘Of course you have,’ Joel mutters under his breath.

‘I can’t even remember how we do this.’ Soph peers at the grid Douglas is drawing on the paper. ‘If a pub is par ten, we have to drink ten drinks – is that right?’

‘Bloody hell, Soph, I think we’d be on the floor,’ says Joel. ‘No, it means that we’ve got to drink our drink in ten sips.’

‘Oh, that seems a little tame.’ She sounds disappointed.

‘Well, if we were playing for eighteen holes, we’d be drinking a hell of a lot of pints,’ I say.

‘Oh, yeah, I guess,’ she says. ‘Wait a second, we’re not doing eighteen holes tonight, are we?’

‘No.’ Joel fixes a stern look at Douglas. ‘We’ll do the nine holes. We used to go round the pubs twice, but now let’s just do them once.’

‘We used to have forfeits, didn’t we?’ says Soph. ‘Although I guess assigning the night security shift is no longer applicable.’

I can’t help but look up at Joel at this and he makes eye contact. That was always one of my favourite shift rotations largely because I got to spend time alone with him.

‘Do you think we actually need to do the pub crawl bit of it?’ asks Soph. ‘Just that it’s Saturday night and we’ll struggle to get another table. We could stay here instead.’

‘That sounds nothing like pub golf; it pretty much ruins the whole purpose, which was to rediscover our youth somewhat,’ says Douglas. ‘We will drink the whole nine holes as well as move pubs.’

‘OK, Braveheart,’ I say and Soph giggles.

Douglas raises an eyebrow and gives us both a scolding look, followed by one of his trademark charming smiles.

‘Bloody hell,’ he says, ‘we’ve been talking about the rules for so long I’ve drunk my sodding drink. Anyone else need a fresh one?’

We all shake our heads. There’s an awkward silence when he goes and I attempt to fill it.

‘So, working in Cannes must be glamourous, Verity.’