Francesco gave one last look back before he got into the bread van. Penny and Stuart each raised a hand to wave at him.

‘Right?’ she prompted Stuart.

‘Put that number into your phone right now, right this second,’ he said. ‘Before you lose it. If there’s something wrong with him, at least find out what it is.’

‘Like that’s not the story of my life,’ Penny replied sceptically, still waving at Francesco and his cute bum.

After service had ended that day and Bridges was closed, Penny sat outside in the unseasonably warm March sunshine. (‘Fake spring’ her uncle called it. ‘There’s three fake springs before May, but don’t be fooled: a week of sun does not a change of season make.’) All day she’d been turning over what had happened that morning in her mind – getting Francesco’s number that way. What did she have to lose by texting him? But then, what if he’d only passed along his number because he was too embarrassed not to? Penny couldn’t quite engage the ‘sod it’ muscles it took to make a move on him. He was gorgeous, though. Really … urgh. She didn’t want to use the word ‘sexy’ but it was the most appropriate one that came to mind. He might be too sexy, thought Penny. If I’m a six out of ten and he’s a nine, he probably wants to date another nine. That’s just hot people maths.

Penny rolled a cigarette from the pouch of tobacco in her lap, using a menthol filter. She knew smoking was bad for her, and yet that was part of the appeal. She let herself have one a day, like Obama apparently did. A good girl doing a bad thing. Lighting it, she simultaneously fished her phone out of her apron, pulling up WhatsApp to send a voice note to her sister Clementine. She held down the record button and slid it up so that it locked, meaning she could talk at length without needing to keep her finger pressed down.

‘So, a thing happened this morning,’ she started, thus beginning the kind of monologue that she and Clementine lovingly called ‘Personal Podcasts’. Clementine was a project manager for Stella McCartney, which meant she was seldom in the country for more than one week at a time before she had to fly off to Tokyo or Helsinki or Milan to oversee the building and fitting of a new store. For the past two years their bond had subsisted mostly on these voice notes recorded and listened to at all hours of the day and night. Sometimes it was easier to be honest about their lives without the other one there – like truths whispered between lovers after dark, when it was simpler to say what needed to be said. In truth, Clementine’s job had brought them closer, even though they were physically far apart.