She is sitting in the window of a noodle bar called Chop Chop. I only notice her because I turn to look at an argument that is going on in the doorway. The manager, a young Chinese man, is trying to block a couple of drunks from entering, middle-aged white men in bulky working jackets. The young manager is waving his arms in a shooing gesture, much as you would to a couple of flies, and one of the drunks has his fists raised and is ready to make something of it but the other takes his mate by the arm and says, ‘Come on, they deep-fry fucking rats in there …’ and pulls him away.

As they pass the window, they stop to make leering gestures at a woman sitting at the counter – one pulling a face, the other grabbing his crotch and shaking it up and down – and the woman gives a slow blink of contempt and turns her face away.

The men have gone and in their place there is me, staring in at her.

She’s dolled up for a night out, eyebrows thickly drawn, the upward lift of them a combination of irony and approval. Her hair is full, her lips glossed. She’s wearing a yellow jumper with a gold thread through it. On the stool beside her, there is a black wool coat with a shawl collar. I was with her when she bought that coat from TK Maxx. It’s a label of some sort, I can’t remember which. It has huge gold buttons. Rosaria, my friend, how are you?

She stares out into the night, her look vacant for a moment, then she looks down at her noodles. That girl was always crazy for chow mein. She’d eat it for breakfast if only she left enough time for breakfast before she had to go to work. The chopsticks in her right hand delve and bring up a mouthful that is far too large to eat in one go. I was always telling her about that. She shovels it in and then ends up having to bite at it when it’s half in, half out her mouth, bending her head low to let the remainder of it drop back into the cardboard box, although a noodle slithers down her chin on its way, leaving a trail of soy. Jeez, girl, you are such a messy eater.