They drank for something to do with their hands and mouths. Angela cursed her gin and tonic. It was impossible to look wise, and to project an air of disinterest in various earthly disasters, while using a straw.

‘I said I was stopping after hitting ten,’ he said. ‘One zero. You know, with what’s going on, some guys don’t know how to stop. But I don’t like this. I don’t like superficial connections with people.’

‘That’s a shame,’ Angela said. ‘I love them.’

‘Angela, I don’t want to jump to any conclusions. I don’t like conclusions, they are dangerous, but may I say something?’

‘Go ahead.’

‘On first read, you strike me as a cold person.’

She considered this for a moment, as it was not an unreasonable observation.

‘I can be likeable if you get to know me,’ she promised, silently wondering if this was true or one of those first-date lies she would have to catalogue and monitor. ‘I just mean I never thought I would become one of those people who enjoys talking to strangers. I never thought my life would swerve off like that, but it has.’

‘Tell me about your friends.’

‘I have two,’ Angela said, boastfully.

She was in possession of one old friend who offered helpful advice like, ‘Have some self-respect!’ Her old friend was full of bizarre ideas inherited from her time in business. She also had a friend in the supermarket. Where all her other friends had disappeared to was a mystery she had no interest in solving.

The silence became quite natural after a while. They ate their dinner to the beat of it.

He gleamed suddenly, as if he had made a discovery. ‘What music do you like?’

‘I like the classics,’ Angela said.

‘Oh yeah? Me too. Which ones?’

Angela threw open her arms and sang loudly but rushed, rendering the lyrics incomprehensible.

‘I don’t know that one.’

Her date’s face was unmoving. And oddly small, she noted warily. It was an awfully tiny face.

‘There’s plenty more where that came from,’ Angela promised. ‘I have a lot of CDs in my car. I don’t like the radio so much lately.’

‘Nobody does,’ he sighed. ‘Who do you blame for it all?’

‘It’s not anybody’s fault. That’s what they say on the radio.’

‘I have a few ideas,’ he said, edgily. ‘So what age are those kids you teach?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Angela smiled. ‘They are short and move quickly in all sorts of directions.’