Eve smiled, but her smile was a sliver of frozen water. She had endured enough of them over the course of the evening. Sandy Hair could see the put-down in her smile: he was quick to spot the offence, in the way that drunks are quick.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked, in a bantering tone edged with aggression.

‘Eve,’ she said. She turned to go.

‘Eve!’ he said, loudly, and gave the abashed man next to him a little shove. ‘This bloke’s name is Adam. Really.’

‘Would you Adam-’n’-Eve it?’ chimed in a third man in a mock-cockney accent, his face shining at his own wit.

‘No,’ Eve said, still smiling thinly, ‘I wouldn’t.’ She turned again to go.

‘Will you bring Adam an apple?’ said Sandy Hair.

‘We don’t have apples.’

‘Not even an Adam’s apple? It looks like you have one.’ He peered showily at her throat, screwing up his eyes.

Two of the men laughed. One looked a little embarrassed. Eve stood there just staring at them, as though something had disconnected inside her. Sandy Hair perused the pudding menu, ostentatiously. Something in her reaction was disturbing and annoying him. He was struggling to keep his game in the air, to re-establish his authority.

‘Well, could I have an Apple Strudel with Glazed Caramel then, Eve,’ he said, sharply. She went to the kitchen to get it.

I watched her coming back with it: her body was stiff and her mouth was pinned into a tighter line. She set the strudel down in front of him.

‘This looks wonderful,’ said Sandy Hair. He took a spoonful quickly before she had time to leave.

‘It tastes so magnificent, I think my friend Adam would like one of these as well now, Eve, so hurry up,’ he said.

The exchange had lost all pretence of lightness. They stared at each other with hatred, like two battling cats. Somewhere along the line, with the ‘hurry up’, this had flared into war.

‘I don’t think he’s going to have one after all,’ Eve said, her face utterly impassive.

‘Why not? I’m paying the bill here.’

‘Yes, and you’re going to pay the bill now,’ she said with a terrible flatness, ‘because you’re ugly, and stupid, and rude, and there’s only so much shit that I’m prepared to take.’

The surrounding tables fell discreetly silent, the diners’ forks suspended halfway to their half-delighted, half-open mouths. But at Sandy Hair’s table the men had stopped laughing. Their round eyes were jerking over to her, and then back to him.

‘Get. Me. The. Manager,’ spat Sandy Hair. His face was rigid with anger. Eve turned and walked away.