‘Someone I had to go and see. Papers to sign. Deathly dull, you know how it is.’ Well, I really didn’t. I wasn’t a hot-shot criminal barrister. ‘Hungry?’

‘Yes, a little.’

‘What would you like to drink? They do excellent cocktails.’ Of course, he’s been here before. He slides the menu over to me like he’s a croupier at a casino, with the flat base of his hand. A performer’s move. I wonder if everything with him is going to be a performance and what role I will play. I pick it up and scan the cocktail list.

‘A pina colada, please.’

‘You can’t have that!’ He shakes his head at me. ‘That’s so pedestrian. Have a Wotton Woo Woo. It’s wonderful, trust me.’

The Woo Woo in the menu looks like a plumed bird of prey, it has fruit skewers and feathers and umbrellas spiking from it; a firework of a cocktail.

‘OK, I’ll give it a go.’

I hate that I have to continually turn my face in order to talk to him. Give him a full view of The Cheek. I try to look enigmatic but I’ve hardly got an enigmatic face. It’s an open book, surely: you can read anything on my face; after all, it comes with its own map.

‘Done anything nice today?’

‘My father and I went to Liberty’s and then to the Royal Albert Hall.’

‘Oh, fantastic, fantastic. Much going on?’

‘Where?’

‘At the Albert Hall. Did you go to a concert?’

‘No, Dad wanted to have a look at the outside.’

‘A look?’ Salvi laughs.

‘You know what I mean. A feel for the place. He likes to touch the fabric of buildings. Brickwork, beams. That sort of thing.’

‘Because he used to be an architect?’

‘Yes.’

An attractive girl, the waitress, pitches up at the table – London seems to be heaving with them. ‘Hi, Salvi,’ she says – all boobs and tiny waist and big kohled eyes.

‘Natalia,’ he drawls idly, like he just screwed her last week.

‘What are we having tonight?’

I fear he may lick his lips and say ‘You’, the way he is looking at her, so I decide to give her my best death stare – he won’t notice as he’s next to me – but she coolly ignores me. Girls like her always do.

‘A Whiskey Sour, please, and this beautiful lady will have a Wotton Woo Woo.’