A large hand emerged and pushed a packet of Ruffles away from his face. Dark eyes, dark hair, and a shadow of stubble that said he hadn’t bothered to shave came into view. Wincing in pain or confusion or both, his eyes met mine and, without warning, everything stopped. The shop, the cat, the chaos all around us, it all disappeared and for one moment, there was just us, the only two people in the entire universe. At exactly the same moment, we both began to smile.

‘Hello,’ I said softly.

‘Hi,’ he whispered back.

‘Ma dai!’

I looked up and saw the girl from the checkout standing in the shop’s doorway, a large brown box in her arms. It fell to the floor with a heavy thud as the little black cat reappeared and wound itself around her legs.

‘It’s OK!’ I shouted in Italian, waving my arms in the air to reassure her that we were both alive. ‘I think he’s going to be OK.’

‘I don’t care if he is OK, look at this place!’ the girl replied, taking in the devastation. ‘I went out for two minutes to collect a delivery and you destroyed my dad’s shop?’

‘I didn’t destroy your dad’s shop!’ I exclaimed as the man tried to roll onto his side, still groaning and clutching his head. ‘Technically, he bumped into me then fell over the cat So, I’m not sure anyone could be considered at fault in a legal sense—’

‘I’m calling the police,’ the girl muttered, fumbling for a phone in her pocket. ‘My dad is going to kill me. Don’t move.’

‘Oh, but I have to.’ I gathered the non-exploded cans of San Pellegrino, still struggling to take my eyes off my assailant, who stared back at me from the floor, dazed and confused. ‘I’m sorry, I really have to go.’

‘You cannot go!’ The girl looked around wildly before grabbing a mop from beside the door and wielding it like a staff. If it weren’t dripping dirty grey water all over the floor from where she’d pulled it out of the bucket, the whole thing would have been very Game of Thrones. ‘You do not leave.’

‘Look, I can’t explain, but I have to go. I have to get this to someone who really needs it,’ I said, as she began twirling the mop from hand to hand, advancing on me slowly. I stood up slowly, stepping around scattered bags of pasta and smashed jars of sauce with half a dozen cans of pop in my arms.

‘You pay,’ she replied with eerie calm. ‘You pay for all of this.’