It wasn’t that nice to see me, I was not the Pope. But it was very nice to receive a message from Vivian, even if he was being as vague as it seemed he was.

I flossed my teeth and replied as thoughtlessly as possible, because there is no substitute for the true tossed-off response.

‘Sure it was nice,’ I wrote.

‘im dying to see you’ he said.

This response came almost instantly. I swallowed the floss. Not really. But we’re obviously just hair and blood, pulsing through the jungle, and you never know when someone will text you on your jungle phone.

‘I am sure you’re not dying,’ I typed.

‘yes’ he typed, a little gnomically, because: yes he’s being dramatic or yes he’s almost dead?

I decided to proceed as though the message had made sense.

‘If you’re SO dying to see me, why don’t you come over right now?’

But I deleted ‘come over right now’ and replaced it with ‘come for a drink’, because I have lots of self-respect and also Dan was home. If luck held out, he’d be at Lachlan’s by the time the drink was over, even though in all probability that just meant I would come home alone and there would be nobody to bitch to, but such are the risks of the adventurous life.

It was so misguided to meet him for a drink. But consider the alternatives. I could go to bed and text him. I could chat to someone else. Going for the drink, I could at least gain information and have another chance to consider what I’d refused. It was getting close to danger without truly courting same, a bit like I was licking just the very tip of the toad.

I liked the Retreat because it was close to home without being so close as to be completely obvious and sleazy; but also because the beer garden had several banks of tables with a nice view of the door, and you could see whoever was approaching before they saw you.

It was late on a Monday night and there was no one out, a couple of people inside but, out here, just no one, and I remember this because there was no one to see my face fall when the consequence of my carelessness was revealed in full.

The man who swung the door open and approached was not Vivian; it was, of course, the stranger who lived across the road from Vivian, whom I had also seen today and who, in retrospect, seemed a bit more likely to believe me ‘nice to see’, and to whom I had also exposed my mobile number, but who had not previously chosen to text message me.

‘Hi!’ he said. ‘I love this bar.’

I glared. ‘You live in Richmond.’

‘So?’ he said. He waved his keys. ‘They’re car keys,’ he said. ‘They get you where you want to go. Is this your first time with cars?’