‘I’m sorry I don’t know his address. I know he lives alone in an apartment but I couldn’t tell you which one. It’s a block of apartments with other men who live alone.’

Her date leaned backwards and performed a waving motion with his hand, as if trying to communicate with Angela’s ex-husband from a distance. ‘What age are those kids you teach?’ he said, through a mouthful of lettuce.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘They are short and move quickly in all sorts of directions.’

Her date (wide-legged jeans, shirt from a disco decade) looked desperately at the young couple across the restaurant as if wishing to signal his immense distress.

‘You know what I didn’t like about that play?’ Angela didn’t know how to let things go.

‘What?’

‘The way it was about the end of the world. Doomsday stuff. That felt obvious to me.’

‘But that’s what is happening right now. That’s life,’ he said, and the way he emphasised life made Angela want to throw her knife and fork at him. She would have done it too, had she not been nervous of the ire of the waiters.

‘Yes, exactly. It’s happening. I don’t need to see it on stage.’

‘I don’t think you like art, Angela.’

‘Maybe I don’t,’ she said, thoughtfully. ‘I think I’m too anxious to spend long periods of time looking at things trying to figure out what they are.’

‘You know what else I think you don’t like?’

‘What?’

‘Nudity. Oh God, you’re just like my ex-wife. A prude – exactly like her. I bet if I got naked right now you would have a problem with that.’

The young angel-boy leapt out of his seat and dashed to his girlfriend’s side. He placed his hands over her unbelieving eyes as Angela’s date began unbuttoning his shirt. The waiters let him get to the third button before they intervened. There was a brief bout of wrestling before Angela’s date, out of breath, fully-dressed and furious, sat back down.

Angela exhaled a long, delightful plume of smoke.

‘I’m having such a nice time,’ she said. ‘After dessert, would you like to sit in my car with me for a while?’

In Angela’s car, they listened to the radio. Two men with the wild intensity of actors were shouting about disease and rising sea levels. One of the radio presenters said he had been having bad dreams, the other said he hadn’t been sleeping at all. Finally, the more innovative of the two screamed, a thin piercing sound that rattled Angela’s car and further reduced its life span.

‘These people shouldn’t be allowed on the radio,’ she said.