Passing into the bathroom proper, I bustled myself backwards into a roomy stall, only slightly put off by the silent, blurry outlines of people walking by, visible through the crystal walls.

‘Right,’ I said as I placed my clutch back on the handy shelf on the back of the door, before fighting with my layers of tulle to make sure they were safely out of the toilet water danger zone. ‘Here’s the deal. You’re here, you’re in the most beautiful dress you have ever worn in your life, and a very handsome, very kind, very funny man really wants to spend the evening with you. You can either say sod it, have a lovely time, let someone else take the lead for once and worry about the real world tomorrow, or you can go back upstairs, feel sorry for yourself, order room service and for ever wonder what might have happened if you’d stayed here with the handsome man and said sod it.’

Room service aside, it really wasn’t much of a contest.

Only I really didn’t know anything about Evan. Just because he was absurdly good looking and seemed all chivalrous didn’t mean he wasn’t planning to throw me down a deep hole and turn me into a three-course meal and a skin suit. This is exactly the kind of event Patrick Bateman would be into.

Stew wouldn’t like it, that went without saying, but Stew knew I wouldn’t like him having dinner with his ex and it hadn’t stopped him. And Evan wasn’t suggesting we elope, just that we spend a couple of hours together at a party. Even if we did fancy each other, we were both grown-ups, we could control ourselves. People met other people who set them off every single day, and you didn’t see them rutting in the streets. Very often. I wasn’t going to rip my (borrowed) knickers off just because some fit American came along and gave me a look that made my heart and ovaries explode.

‘But you do still have a fiancé,’ I reminded myself. ‘This is just harmless flirting.’

I rubbed my hands together and thought about my engagement ring, tucked away in my wallet, in the safe on The Songbird and sailing far away from me somewhere on the sea. Would Evan even have approached me if I’d been wearing it? And would the answer to that question make me feel better or worse?

Emerging from the stall, I turned on a rose-gold tap at the rose-gold sink and washed my hands slowly and thoroughly. At the basin beside mine was a tall, gorgeous woman with a golden puff of natural curls and eyelashes so long, you could have used them as feather dusters. She smiled at me in the mirror and I returned the gesture.

‘I love your dress,’ I said, sticking to tried and tested conversation starters. ‘It’s gorgeous.’