She puts the chopsticks back into the box – jamming them in so they stand upright – and checks her phone. I wonder if she is waiting for someone, a friend or a date. If it’s a date, I don’t feel it’s one she is particularly looking forward to. There is no alertness in her gaze when she looks back out at the street, no sense of anticipation. She eats a bit more, plays on her phone, gets bored of it, looks around, goes back to the phone. Eventually, she becomes still and just sits. I am guessing the noodles are in preparation for a night of drinking, with a group perhaps. She was always big on lining her stomach first.

I look at her through the glass, my beautiful friend, and it’s almost as if our gazes meet for a moment, as if what she sees is not her own reflection but mine, in the same way Andrew did the night I followed him home and hovered outside his kitchen door. She can’t see me, of course, only her own gaze looking back, but I feel certain that in that moment she can feel the fact that she can’t see me. Because I am there, she feels my absence – to a greater or lesser extent, my absence is always there.

She gives a sigh, picks up the paper napkin on the counter top and wipes her chin. The box of noodles is half full but she’s lost interest. She pushes it away and turns to the handbag sitting on top of her coat. She pulls out a spotty plastic make-up bag, plonks it on the counter and extracts a compact mirror and a lip gloss. I smile to myself. I gave her that compact. It’s a vintage one I found in a car boot sale, gilt, scallop-shaped, with a slightly rusted clasp. The mirror inside it was still good, though. It inspired us to spend a rainy Saturday afternoon watching Audrey Hepburn films. She said for her next birthday she wanted a feather boa and a cigarette holder but I think by the time it came round, I forgot.