I waited – the eight minutes passed, then another five, then ten. I considered how I wanted to look when he approached me. If I had one knee bent and the foot resting on the wall behind me, arms folded, did it make me look casual or a bit cross? I wasn’t cross. I was crazy about him and very much wanted to look casual. I studied my phone. That way, Matty would see me first, from a distance as he approached, and would see that I was not looking out for him. I wanted him to walk towards me in anticipation of the moment when I would look up and see him. I wanted him to be staring at me at the moment our eyes met.

A group of four lads burst from the door of Burger King, all noise and shoving at each other. They disturbed a flock of scrawny pigeons that were pecking at the paving slabs in front of me. The pigeons rose in a clamour. I moved a couple of metres to my left, further away from the door.

When my phone began buzzing, I assumed it was Matty saying he was on his way.

Ian.

Ian was the boyfriend before Matty. We had broken up six months previously, not so much broken up as drifted apart – even drifted sounds a bit strong, suggesting as it does an element of volition or impetus. We had dated for a few months, in a desultory manner; we had five or six occasions of perfectly acceptable sex – the kind of sex that Rosaria would call vanilla. We were never big on texting each other or calling in between times and the gaps between seeing each other had got longer until there came the coffee we had one Saturday afternoon, in March, when he said, ‘By the way, I’m seeing someone. I thought you should know.’

Human vanity – so predictable, ubiquitous: even though I wasn’t particularly keen on Ian I had felt a stab, of what? Pain is putting it a little strongly. A stab of indignation, perhaps – a feeling that I knew was fleeting even as I was feeling it. I didn’t want Ian but that didn’t stop me wanting him to want me.

‘Oh?’ I said. ‘Where did you meet?’

‘Christmas party,’ he replied, ‘at my office. She’s a freelance consultant.’

Technically, he and I had still been together at Christmas – we had seen each other in January and I had stayed the night at his neat bachelor house in Werrington. He had guinea pigs in cages in the garden. He also owned several pairs of chinos.

‘I thought you should know,’ he repeated. ‘I took her to Pete and Mariam’s on Sunday so, you know …’ Pete and Mariam were distant cousins of his. Mariam’s brother Rashid was Head of Art at my school.

I shrugged, then said, ‘Are you following the Pistorius trial? Unbelievable.’