The boyfriend was edgy drunk and she was over-the-top drunk, an explosive combination, and anyone who came near them was likely to get whipped up by the corner of their personal typhoon.

She wanted a double vodka and tonic. He wanted a pint. I was civil enough to her, but I was keeping my distance. There was a hum of trouble off the pair of them. I served them both their drinks, and kept myself busy with the other customers. There was plenty going on elsewhere to keep me well away from them without it looking deliberate, or so I thought.

A few vodkas later, she started up again. Her eyes had locked on to me with the peculiar, fixated stare of the slightly belligerent drunk.

‘You’re not very friendly, Jacky,’ she said, mushing the words a little. ‘I bet you can’t even remember my name.’

I couldn’t, as it happened. I had been racking my brains for it all night. I’d gone out with one of her lesser friends briefly at school, and I had the dim memory of it ending in some kind of minor dispute with the potential for wider hysteria from which I had quickly retreated. But the worst thing would be to take a stab in the dark at the name and get it wrong. That could reasonably, or very unreasonably, be interpreted as an insult.

‘Of course I can,’ I lied.

‘What is it then?’ she said.

‘If you don’t know it yourself, I’m not going to tell you,’ I said. ‘It’s a state secret. Do you think I’d go giving out your name to just anyone?’

My lame little joke enjoyed far too spectacular a success. She went off into stagey peals of laughter. I bet by the time she had finished she had forgotten what I had said in the first place. I winced inside, and then I looked over at him. He had obviously interpreted my remark as an unwelcome attempt at flirtation. His face was a thundercloud waiting to burst. I didn’t want to be standing there when the rain came.

I busied myself up at the other end of the bar. When I came back, to pour two pints of Guinness, the pair of them were having a spat. I caught the tail end of his words, ‘that wee smart-arse’. I concluded from the direction of his stare, and without wishing to be immodest, that I was the wee smart-arse in question.