‘What about the Wheelhouse?’ she said, and was proud of herself for being able to say the name without even a residual sting of bitter memory. ‘It’d be lovely to sit outside by the river, don’t you think?’

She turned to Ezra, who had slipped his arm from around her and was also looking down at the pub. His buoyant mood of a moment before seemed to have dissipated.

‘What’s the matter?’ Edie asked.

Ezra glanced at her and then away. ‘I haven’t set foot in that place since the night you stood me up all those years ago,’ he said. ‘I’m still not sure I can, to be honest.’

For a second, Edie thought she’d misheard. ‘I – What?’

‘Don’t tell me you don’t even remember it,’ he said, with a short laugh, ‘when it’s haunted me for years.’

Edie took a step back. ‘But – I didn’t stand you up. You stood me up! I sat there for an hour, all alone, looking like a complete idiot because it was so obvious that I’d made an effort for someone who couldn’t even be bothered to turn up!’

Ezra looked at her as if she were mad. ‘What on earth are you talking about? I was the one here on my own, all dressed up in a bloody suit, looking like a numpty because you didn’t even—’

‘I was here!’ Edie insisted. ‘I bought a new dress, I put up my hair, I was wearing bloody heels, and—’

They both stopped, staring at each other.

‘All right,’ Ezra said, slowly. ‘If I was here and you were here – what in the hell happened?’

‘I don’t know,’ Edie said. ‘All I know is that I was here, on the dot, 8 p.m. on the seventh of June—’

‘No,’ Ezra said, cutting her off. ‘No, no, no, it was 7 p.m. on the eighth of June.’

‘No,’ Edie said. ‘That’s not right. At least…’

They both subsided into silence, trying to remember a hurried arrangement made somewhat shyly a decade and a half before.

‘Oh, God,’ Ezra said, his voice an echo of Edie’s sentiments as the enormity of a single foolish mistake sank in. ‘It doesn’t really matter which it was, does it?’

They stood there in silence for a moment, equally stunned.

‘How did we never once talk about this?’ Ezra asked. ‘Not once, in fifteen years?’

Edie shook her head. ‘I thought I’d misunderstood, or that you’d changed your mind. I never wanted to have to face you again, and then every time I did—’

Ezra reached out to take her hand, squeezing it between his. ‘I was as bad. I could have come to talk to you, asked you straight out, instead of being a stubborn idiot. I’m sorry. I never would have left you there alone. Never, in a million years. I was so happy that you’d said yes to the date. And then… I thought I must have shown my hand too quickly, that I’d been too eager or something. I already knew I was punching above my weight with you. Why would someone like you want an overgrown brute of a rig rat like me anyway? So I… let it go.’