And with that she was gone, and Achilles was left in a dizzy state of rapture. Usually, he didn’t feel any great romantic longings for anyone and was happy enough with sex for its own sake, but there was something about this girl that intrigued him. He wanted to see her again. He wanted to keep talking to her. He put the napkin in his pocket and left the coffee shop, thinking about her all the way to the Tube and all the way home. It was only when he put the key in his front door that he remembered he’d left his new trainers behind.

HASHTAG MESSIAH

Elizabeth had spent the morning under the direction of Wilkes at Sangers for Skangers and had now been dragged to a soup kitchen to decant a tureen of something turgid and greenish that he inexplicably referred to as ‘vegetable soup’ into bowls for several dozen of London’s homeless. Although she longed to return north of the river for a hot shower, Elizabeth was feeling virtuous and hoped that her Good Works might mean they could go to MNKY HSE or Sushisamba later for some real food. If she caught her boyfriend in the right mood, she might even be able to persuade him to join her for an afternoon at the spa of one of the five-star hotels on Park Lane, where they could scrub the greasy film of poverty from their skin with a meso-infusion body hydration treatment and a cryotherapy energy facial. She couldn’t be expected to be virtuous and honourable every minute of the day, she told herself – she wasn’t Jameela Jamil, after all – and she’d already gained almost forty new followers by posting a picture of herself on Instagram with her arm around, but not quite touching, the shoulders of a destitute young man who looked into the camera lens with disgust.

@ElizCleverley Feels so good to give back! We take luxuries like food for granted in the western world & need to remember there are people out there who don’t share our good fortune. #homeless #SoupKitchen #VegetableSoup #Recipes #Kindness #Goodness #Decency #FirstWorld #KimKardashian #Smell #Rancid #Humanity #BobGeldof #Gross #PleaseHelp #Indigent #Indigenous #Indignant #AGoodWash #Soap #MoltonBrown

‘Can we have a talk?’ asked Wilkes, sidling up behind her and wrapping his bony arms around her waist. He’d spent the last hour going through the Twitter account of a famous writer to make sure that she wasn’t following anyone objectionable, then offering her up for the world’s condemnation when he saw that she was. A constructive use of his time, he told himself.

‘Jesus fuck,’ she said, putting a hand to her chest. ‘Don’t creep up on me like that.’

‘Sorry,’ he said, backing away and holding his hands in the air. ‘That was wrong of me. I should never have touched you without your permission.’

‘I don’t mind you touching me, Wilkes, I just don’t want to have a heart attack when you do it.’