I’m too close to see him blush, but I can feel the heat emanating from his face. ‘And yeah, there was a girl. I thought she was in love with me, and that I wasn’t so closed off and cold that I was capable of loving someone too. With hindsight, I basically paid her to love me. I had money to spare because it was a well-paid job and I never had a chance to spend anything other than the rent. I hardly ever saw her because I was working so much and so bone-crushingly exhausted the rest of the time. I’d give her a call whenever I had an hour free, and then make the mistake of sitting down for a minute, and I’d be unconscious on the sofa by the time she arrived. I was handing her money to make up for it. It would be like, “You’ve come all this way and I can barely open my eyes. Pay for a cab home and here’s a little extra to treat yourself to something nice because you’ve got such a crap boyfriend.” Sometimes I’d have a Sunday afternoon out of the office and we’d go for a walk, but I never put my phone away. I’d constantly be online, watching the stock market, emailing clients, taking calls, and she’d be waiting for me outside a shop with a pretty dress in the window, and I’d feel so bad that I’d send her in to buy it and whatever else she wanted.’

‘Fergus and Fiona said she took advantage of you.’

‘Oh, to be a fly on the wall in that market.’ He laughs again. ‘Looking back now, I can see that I was an emotional wreck and it wasn’t really love, but at the time, I was head-over-heels, and I could somehow convince myself I was normal because I had a girlfriend.’

My fingers rub the fleshy part at the base of his thumb. I love that he trusts me enough to open up, because I get the feeling it’s not something he does very often.