‘I ran into a few waifs and strays when I went back,’ he said, after taking a long sip. ‘Told ’em they could come and join us. Hope you don’t mind.’

The pub door opened again and a dozen or so people trailed in, all members of the salsa class. There was Big John, the girl with the ponytail and… Jeremy.

There wasn’t enough room for the whole group to sit down, so someone suggested the pub garden. The ground was wet, but it had just about stopped raining and the clouds must have rolled off in another direction because all Anna could see was a dusky-blue sky.

When they got outside, Anna expected the rest of the group to split into smaller huddles of conversation. This would have allowed her to employ her usual tactic of hovering on the fringes, but Jeremy began to tell a story about how he’d accidentally got roped into taking part in a flamenco show when on holiday in Spain and everyone gathered around to listen. It seemed that, just like someone else Anna used to know, he could hold the attention of a group easily, charming them, entertaining them.

She laughed along with the others as he described his efforts in his mostly forgotten schoolboy Spanish to tell the dancers they should pick someone else from the audience. It felt safe to allow herself to relax a little because he was talking to the whole group, and she didn’t feel singled out, the sole focus of his attention. Be open, she reminded herself. That’s all for now.

There was a brief moment where his gaze landed on Anna, just as she’d been staring at his face, trying to work out what exactly it was that made the arrangement of his features pleasing. Their eyes met and locked, just for a second. Despite not having heard a peep from her Not Spencer alarm all night, it now started pulsing like a heartbeat.

Shut up, she told it. There’s nothing to get your knickers in a twist about. I’m not going to leap on the man. I’m just admiring him. From afar.

And that was okay, she realized. To appreciate a nice-looking man.

She was still young, and it was only natural. To be honest, it was quite a relief to know that this vital part of her hadn’t withered and died with Spencer, as she’d assumed it had. Those needs and desires were still there, waiting for her to make use of them.

And, in the spirit of embracing new experiences, when the salsa crew did inevitably splinter into different groups, Anna didn’t slink away when Jeremy came over to say hello. They were right in the middle of a conversation about old Hitchcock movies when the heavens opened. The umbrellas listing through the central holes of each picnic table were hanging limply, leaving them with no shelter from the fat drops of rain that seemed to target them like tiny bombs.

Most of the group ran back inside, including Lee and Gabi, but Anna and Jeremy were further away from the back door of the pub, so they ran from table to table, trying to find an umbrella that worked. The first one wouldn’t open and the second wouldn’t stay up. By the time they’d huddled under umbrella number three the rain was hitting Anna’s scalp and running through her hair and down her forehead. Both she and Jeremy were drenched.