Ben topped up her wine and then poured his own. He drank a slug of it and smacked his lips. ‘Actually, when I worked here, there was this love triangle between the head chef and these two waitresses. He was seeing them both and they found out and confronted him on the lunch shift. I missed it, which was a shame, as apparently one of them threw a bottle of the home-made chilli sauce at his head.’ He gestured to the squat, heavy bottle in the middle of the table.

‘Oh my God. That could knock you out.’

‘She missed.’ Ben took another slug of wine. ‘Still. Made a dreadful mess.’

Alexa laughed, and he looked gratified. She moved her right hand from where it was clenched on her lap and placed it on the table, within reach of his.

‘Bet it’s all love triangles and threesomes in the Civil Service,’ he said, teasingly.

A mirthless laugh. ‘Please.’

Slightly hesitantly, she told him about the Gordon’s Wine Bar pilgrimages, feeling rather mean as she exaggerated a few of her colleagues. Still: a reward. He chuckled and held her gaze for so long, she knew she was blushing. And then, in turn, he told her about his colleague Callum who had accidentally sent an email slagging off their boss to their boss and had managed – against the odds – to delete it from her computer before she read it. It involved a second colleague acting as a distraction, and a race against the clock.

The bocconcini arrived, delivered entirely without flourish again by their waiter. Alexa speared one with her fork. Ben went in with his fingers.

‘Sorry,’ he said, through a mouthful of molten cheese. He had a string of mozzarella hanging from the side of his lip. She was about to tell him but he decoded her. ‘I have food on my face, don’t I?’

‘Yeah,’ she said, with teasing sympathy.

He wiped his face with a napkin. ‘Gone?’

‘Gone.’

The pizza arrived too. Ben clocked her empty glass and ordered a second bottle of Verdicchio. She had been hoping he would.

‘You don’t have to get up early or anything?’

Her stomach pitched again.

‘I can confirm I have no early-morning commitments.’

‘Excellent.’

Alexa ate her pizza gratefully and, after the first two slices, abandoned her knife and fork. She had been careful to take sips of water in between gulps of wine but she’d had well over half a bottle now, probably more. Her head was the right side of spinning but her lips were loose. She had just finished telling Ben that she had learned about her parents’ impending divorce on discovering – aged eleven – that her father was living in the (large) garden shed, and wondered whether this was, in fact, a bit of a buzzkill.

‘Whoah,’ he said, lowering a half-eaten slice of pizza to his plate in order to give her his undivided attention. ‘That must have been pretty bewildering.’