Elizabeth nodded, impressed by his wisdom. She started to picture him wearing a slim-fit suit, waiting at the top of an aisle for her, while Harry Styles stood at the altar in a Stella McCartney dress, long earrings and a pair of Doc Martens as he prepared to officiate. ‘What’s your name anyway?’ she asked.

He tapped something on his phone and hers immediately beeped. Picking it up she saw her new follower. He had a blue tick too, the fucker.

‘@WillBuchanModel ,’ she said, following him back.

‘Take a look at my timeline,’ he said. ‘I post once every few days at most. And I keep it minimal.’

She scrolled through his recent posts. Most of them were pictures of him having just emerged from the shower, wearing a low-slung towel, looking deeply concerned, as if someone had just informed him that the Spanish flu had wiped out three per cent of the world’s population in the early twenties and he was devastated by the pointless loss of life.

‘You’re ripped,’ she said.

‘Am I? Oh, thanks. I basically eat whatever I want. I don’t even go to the gym more than five or six times a week.’

She looked over at him and waited for his eyes to meet hers, feeling a sudden conviction that this conversation was one they would recall months from now, when they were lying in bed together, and laugh at how cute their first encounter was. He didn’t look back, though. In fact, he was focussed on something on his MacBook and seemed to have forgotten her presence entirely.

‘You can just ask, you know,’ she said finally.

‘I can what?’ he replied, finally looking up at her.

‘You can just ask.’

‘Ask what?’

‘For my number.’

‘Why would I do that?’ he asked, baffled.

‘I think we both know why,’ she said, laughing a little.

He stared at her, his beautiful face as blank as his beautiful mind.

‘So you can ask me out.’

‘Oh,’ he said, leaning back in his chair, as if this was something that happened to him a lot. ‘Oh, right. I’m flattered. Honestly, that’s just so nice of you. But no. That’s okay.’

She stared at him. ‘Excuse me?’ she said.

‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘I don’t need your number.’

‘Oh, of course. You have it on your system already.’

‘Do we? Oh, right.’

‘So?’ she asked.

‘So what?’

‘So I’ll wait to hear from you?’

‘You’ve lost me.’

‘For drinks.’

‘Oh, I don’t drink,’ he said.

‘Dinner, then.’

‘You want me to take you to dinner?’

‘Well, don’t you?’

‘Not really, no. Sorry. I think you’ve got the wrong idea.’

She felt her breakfast beginning to make its way from her stomach in the opposite direction than nature had originally intended.

‘I was kidding. Obviously,’ she said.

‘Were you, though?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t think you were. And like I say, I’m flattered. But no, sorry. No offence.’