Becky, baffled by the bunch of flowers, was about to confirm she was when—

‘I think they might be for me,’ said Kate and, sure enough, the card was for a Miss K. Ellis and they were from Tim.

‘“From your bus driver”,’ Kate read aloud. ‘“I hope this is the beginning of a very long journey for us. XX”’

‘Wow, what prompted that, then?’ said Becky. ‘He taking you out on the 196 tonight?’

Kate cocked her head. ‘It’s Valentine’s Day.’

‘Oh, right.’ Then it sunk in. ‘Oh, right!’ She’d only gone and agreed to a date with Adam on the corniest day of the year. A day that was full of unspoken expectations, and where the capacity for embarrassment was limitless. She groaned inwardly before reminding herself it was all just meaningless commercial rubbish and she would ignore it. Maybe he hadn’t noticed it either.

‘Happy Valentine’s Day!’ said Adam, as she walked up to him in the foyer of the Science Museum. He leaned over to kiss her softly on the cheek.

‘You too,’ she said, a fraudulent smile on her face.

The airy, pristine-white foyer was populated with numerous couples and a few people on their own, trying not to look too desperately at the front doors.

‘You look nice,’ he said as she shrugged off her coat and handed it in at the cloakroom.

‘So do you.’ And it was true, he did. His deep-turquoise flowered shirt picked out the sunset tones of his hair.

They had tickets for that night’s special event – Robots Through the Ages – and made their way to Room 25, which held about thirty people. Towering above them, right in the middle of the room, was a huge dull-silver robot, with a neon-green grill mouth, cone-shaped green ears and a single green antenna sticking out of his head. His large silver-framed eyes took up half of his head and suddenly they lit up and he began to march/slide across the floor. To Becky, it seemed as if he was coming straight for her, and she couldn’t help but be intimidated by his eight-foot lumbering frame and those eyes that were looking right at her and she instinctively grabbed Adam’s arm, laughing nervously.

‘Say hello to Cygan,’ said a woman cheerfully, her head mike amplifying her voice, and Cygan lifted his arm in greeting to the crowd’s tentative giggles and nervously raised fingers.

The woman, Sally, then introduced herself as the museum’s robotics expert, and after a short background on the Italian-designed Cygan, an example of the most advanced technology in the world back in the 1950s, she invited groups to take a closer look, as the rest wandered around the other exhibits.

‘It’s quite terrifying really,’ said Becky, looking back over her shoulder in wonder.

‘He’s over fifty years old,’ said Adam. ‘They’re much more sophisticated now.’

‘That’s even more terrifying,’ said Becky. ‘Did you ever think of getting into robotics?’

‘Chemistry was always my thing. Matter, reactions, forming new substances.’