My late mum was nothing if not a romantic fantasist, and I know that the real reason I’m here on this date – if I can even call it that – is because I want to make her happy in some small way. There is so much I have to make up for, but I have no idea how to begin.

Shrugging off my melancholy, I venture back to the table and listen while Billy tells me a funny story about his father’s retirement plans, which to date have included pottery, ju-jitsu, birdwatching, and now, apparently, he’s adding pond-building to the list.

‘He spent all of Sunday digging the hole, then found out how much it was going to cost to line it with sand and scrapped the whole project. I think my mum might bury him in it!’

Billy’s dad hung up his blacksmith’s hammer in August, handing the reins of his business over to his eager protégé. I have known the family since I first started learning to ride, back when my legs were too short to reach the stirrups, and it has been a case of one amusing anecdote after another ever since.

I make it through three more victorious games of pool and two more illicit orders of tequila before my carefully constructed armour begins to chink. Knowing me as well as he does, it doesn’t take Billy long to notice that I have fallen silent, and that I’m not biting my lip because I’m concentrating on the game, but in order to stop myself from crying.

‘You’re regretting saying yes to this date now, aren’t you?’ he asks.

‘I would never regret spending time with you,’ I tell him honestly. ‘You’re one of the people I like most in the world.’

Billy reddens at that, the colour spreading across his cheeks and down his throat.

‘People you like?’ he repeats, a note of reluctant resignation in his tone as I reach for my glass of wine.

I know what he wants me to say. He wants me to admit that I like him in more than a friendly way, that I agreed to come here tonight because I feel the same way that he does, because I want to be more to him than just that daft and haphazardly blundering lass from the stables with the hair that’s nearly long enough to sit on. The girl who shares her Pot Noodle with him when he takes a break from shoeing the horses and makes him cups of instant coffee on cold winter mornings. I almost wish I did love Billy in that pure and passionate way, because then it would all be so easy.

The memory of my lunch with David hits me hard, landing like hooves in the centre of my chest.

‘Genie?’