Ben was oblivious to Jane’s background checks. Before I could get a word in, she’d found out most of his history. Born in Croydon, he was the eldest, with a younger sister. His parents moved to Spain when he was twenty-five, so he had had to find somewhere to live. Moved in with his sister for a while, then rented two other flats before he moved in with me. Apparently, he’d had similar problems with flatmates that I‘d had. He turned twenty-eight in April and was saving up a deposit to buy his own place, then he wanted to open his own security firm.

‘Any girlfriends?’

Ben’s ears grew pink, and I squirmed in my seat.

‘Jane!’ I countered.

‘Two serious, a few not particularly serious. Nothing at the minute.’

My pulse quickened, and I took a bite of my sandwich as Jane lifted her eyebrows at me.

‘Eve’s the same. One at high school, one from work and her ex, Dean, but you and him were only together for about six months, weren’t you?’ Jane pointed her crisp at me and I began to cough, choking on a slice of ham I’d swallowed too quickly. Ben had to pat me on the back to dislodge it.

‘Thanks for the chairs,’ I said to Ben when I could speak again, hoping to change the subject. He bought a set of four matching ones to replace the three mismatched ones left after my outburst.

‘Chairs?’ Jane screwed up her face and Ben began to laugh.

‘She broke one,’ he said, nudging my elbow with his. I rolled my eyes.

Later, when Ben had left to go out, Jane voiced her approval. She thought Ben was perfect, but I told her I hadn’t even decided whether I liked him yet. In return, she threw me a knowing look, but I shrugged it off. I was able to offload my worries about Mum and her drinking, on top of the redundancies at work. I didn’t tell her about my debt, some things were too embarrassing to talk about.

Jane told me she’d started seeing a doctor in neurology. He was tall with wavy blond hair and I could see from her face she was already smitten. She said he was toying with the idea of coming travelling with her next year and she’d set a date of the first of February. She thought that would give her enough time to save up the rest of her travelling money. I was excited for her but couldn’t help feeling sad she would be leaving me, probably for a year.

Monday 9 October 2017