I asked him what he did again. He wrote songs and depped for bands, he reminded me.

He tapped his teaspoon on the side of the table in a drumbeat.

‘Ah yes, musician, that was it. I wondered why alarm bells were ringing. My mother warned me away from musicians,’ I told him jovially, vaguely able to recollect a lucid one-sided conversation with my mum that consisted of her listing unsuitable men.

‘What’s wrong with musicians?’ A smile crept out of the corner of his mouth as he leant back in his chair. He stretched his arms up. His grey T-shirt was crumpled after a night on the floor next to my bed and I felt my cheeks flush at the memory of him removing it.

‘You are all so melancholy and a little bit flaky.’ I looked into my coffee. ‘Creativity comes before anything else, and well, basically you’re all a bit hard up.’

Ben nodded. ‘Yep, sounds about right. I’m a skint melancholic flaky musician.’ There was an air of sarcasm to his tone.

I quickly added. ‘It’s just one of those little bits of advice that mums give to their daughters, you know? Did your parents not give you any advice growing up?’

Ben gave a sniff and turned his head away from me. ‘I don’t have a dad. It’s just me and my mum. We live in a beach house up the coast about thirty miles away.’ He breathed in and let out a loud sigh. He suddenly seemed agitated and pulled out a packet of cigarettes from his jeans pocket and lit one. He inhaled, pushed his hair back with one hand and then opened his mouth in an exaggerated ‘O’ as he exhaled. ‘I was only here last night for a gig, I rarely come out. I’m a bit of a hermit normally.’ His voice was raspy, from the night before when we had shouted to one another over the music.

I was fully aware that he had glided over the subject of an absent father and it made me think about something that Eve had told me about absent fathers, and what to look out for, specifically in boys: depression, self-criticism, low self-esteem.

Cheaters.

I looked at Ben again, at his stubble, at his large soft tender-looking hands that had clearly never done a day’s real labour. At his dark eyes, that were like pools waiting for me to dive into, so I could swim into his soul. He dropped his cigarette into his empty coffee cup.

All the while I watched him and drank him in, I was acutely aware of what he could be thinking about me. How I presented myself? What did he see? Would he ever be able to know the real me?

I asked him what tune he was tapping out with his active teaspoon that had found its way to the edge of the cup, saucer and sugar bowl.

He told me the song questioningly as though I wouldn’t have heard of it. ‘We played it last night at the gig. The crowd love the old sixties classics.’