Salvi was waiting outside. Eight o’clock on the dot. He was on his phone, smiling at something, leaning against the wall next to the entrance and wearing jeans and a white shirt, which as I got closer I realized was embroidered with tiny figures – cute divers in navy swimming trunks and 1950s bikini babes in sunglasses and turbans, lying on beach towels. When I was close enough for him to look up and smile, he simply took me by the hand and we walked into the bar.

The music is thumping as we make our way to our booth, and I smile at finding the pair of us stepping in time to Grace Jones’ ‘Slave to the Rhythm’ – Salvi with a swagger, me with the uncertain step of a second-dater who’s not exactly sure how the first date went. I hope I look OK. I’m wearing a jersey stretch cream midi dress with cap sleeves, slash hip pockets and a cowl neck – a dress I’d bought myself for my fortieth birthday but have never, ever worn. Salvi shows me to my seat, half of a purple velvet banquette, facing the stained-glass spectacle that flanks the Strand and I presume he will take the seat opposite – the waiting studded leather hardback chair – but he wedges himself next to me, his thigh flanking mine, denim to silky cream jersey, birthmark side.

‘Good evening,’ he says, and when I automatically turn to face him he leans from his side-saddle position and his eyelashes and his big warm smile come towards me and he kisses me. He smells of cinnamon and coconut. His lips are warm and soft and teasing and he holds them on mine for a few seconds, then his tongue edges forward and in my relief and joy at being out with him again, I find myself daring to meet it with mine, and before I know it we are doing the kind of snogging my dad never witnessed at school discos, the kind of ‘Look at us’ kissing only the drunk, smug or those with something to prove will exhibit.

When it’s over, Salvi sits back in his seat and picks up the drinks menu, as though nothing has happened, and I sit back in mine, reeling. I wasn’t expecting to be kissed at the beginning of the night and certainly not like this – it’s like we just stepped from the end of last night’s date straight into half-past midnight of this one.

‘So, how are you?’ asks Salvi, turning to me again, drinks menu in hand. As we were kissing, my forearm was angled against the edge of the table and resting in a puddle-patch of water – condensation of a former patron’s drink? I soak up that dark water now with a left-behind, pristine napkin, pushing it to the corner of the table when sodden.

‘Good, thanks. You? What was the lawyerly thing, really?’