‘I know.’ I roll over on my side and look out of my bedroom window at the lashing rain, crossing my fingers for a better day tomorrow. ‘That’s what’s so weird about this. I was disappointed that he didn’t kiss me, but I was even more baffled as to why I didn’t just take the lead.’

‘You must really like him. I’m so jealous. I had a Tinder date during the week—’

‘You never said! How was it?’

‘He spent the whole evening talking about bridges, then asked me if he could smell my armpit.’

‘WHAT?’ I let out an involuntary snort of laughter.

Sash sighs loudly. ‘I’m paraphrasing. Obviously. But he did talk about bridges a lot – did you know that the Millau Viaduct in France is so high it sometimes sticks out above the clouds?’

I quickly do a Google Image search on my phone. ‘Wow. That’s actually quite cool. Have you seen it?’

‘What? No. Is that really the focus here, Lex?’

‘Sorry. So, bridges. What else did you learn?’

‘That’s not funny.’ Sasha sounds exasperated but also amused. ‘He honestly managed to link every conversation to some kind of bridge trivia. Holidays, interests, work. Even the nostalgia route resulted in him telling me about the bridge cake his mum made for his birthday one year.’

‘That’s not so bad. We all had novelty cakes when we were kids.’

‘It was for his twenty-first,’ she wails. ‘And it was apparently a two-foot-high imitation of the Chang-yon Bridge in China.’

‘It’s actually the Chengyang Bridge,’ I correct her, scanning the information on the Wikipedia search result.

‘Seriously, Lex?’

‘Shit. Sorry.’ I press the home button on my phone and focus my attention on Sasha. ‘That’s a bit obsessive. So, where did the armpit request come in?’

‘I was so desperate to get off the subject of ruddy bridges, I started yakking on about what I had been doing that day. Mentioned that I’d been to Boots – and listed everything I bought there, including a new antiperspirant.’

‘And then he asked if he could smell your armpit?’

‘Well, no. He wasn’t saying anything. I’d finally found a topic he couldn’t link to bridges – so I rambled on about my new antiperspirant having a lovely fragrance, and how I kept getting wafts of it as I was talking to him.’

‘And then he asked if he could smell it?’

‘Yes. What a weirdo, right?’

I bite my lip to hold back the laughter. ‘Err… Sash. I think he was just being polite. He probably didn’t know how to respond to the crazy lady describing her shopping in detail.’

The line goes silent.

‘Sash?’

‘Oh, man. I’m a weirdo too.’ The wailing returns, having jumped an octave. ‘I’ve had so many bad dates, I’ve turned into a bad date. This is it, Lex – the point of no return. I’m going to be alone for ever.’

I have to stifle a laugh. Sash and Lex. Joined at the hip since ninety-three. Her, a serial dater with a dismal track record. Me, there to pick her up after another bad date.