Still, I wasn’t quite ready for an interrogation when I checked into the hotel and the girl at the wood-veneered reception desk downstairs suddenly said, with an expression of benignly professional concern, ‘Here for business or pleasure?’

She was in her mid-twenties, rake-thin with resolutely over-plucked eyebrows and reddish hair swept back into a sleek ponytail. A laminated name badge identified her as ‘Marie’. Why ask? I thought. It was the most anonymous of all hotels, surely, designed for the budget businessman and the economy traveller, bristling with trouser presses and stripped of room service. But they had probably told her at the training course to be bright, to ask customers perky questions in order to show that you cared. Part of me wanted to retort sharply ‘Neither!’ or ‘Business!’ but people pick up on irritation and it sticks in their minds like a sharp stone.

‘Pleasure, I suppose,’ I said. ‘I’m over for a friend’s wedding, and then I’m going to take a few extra days to see some relatives.’

She looked up quickly, more keenly interested than I had anticipated, and said, ‘Where’s the wedding?’

Indeed, where was the wedding? What a stupid thing to say in the first place. I had forgotten that women love to talk about weddings. It’s like casually mentioning to a gang of small children that you’re going to visit a chocolate factory tomorrow and expecting that to be the last word.

I scrunched up my face and hid my eyes with my hand in mock-shame, buying extra time. Scatty me.

‘I haven’t looked at the invitation again since I came over,’ I said. ‘I think they’re getting married in the City Hall, and then the reception’s in a Belfast hotel, so it’ll be within taxi distance, wherever it is. But I hope I’ve got the day right, at least.’

‘Just as well I asked!’ she beamed, buoyed up by my masculine disorganisation.

I gave her a smile as wide as Belfast Lough, and as icy cold inside: ‘Just as well you did. I’ll dig it out from the bottom of my case and have a look.’

‘And will none of your relatives put you up?’ she said.