‘I’m excited,’ Penny told Sharon as they arrived, joining the queue at coat check and rifling through their handbags for change to tip the porter. The women had been invited to the soft opening of a new restaurant in Notting Hill called Ecclesiast. Dofi, a colleague from Penny’s days at Grayshott Hall – the first ‘proper’ kitchen job after culinary school for them both – had gone out on her own finally. Penny had been just as ambitious as Dofi once, but after the cancer her priorities had shifted. A little North London café was one thing, but Penny knew a whole restaurant that did lunch and dinner, could turn a hundred and fifty covers a day, employed scores of people and was probably vying for a Michelin Star, was quite another. Penny was able to be genuinely happy for Dofi though, because – perpetual singleness aside – Penny was actually really in love with how she’d set up her own life, too. They both had businesses that were right for them.

‘Huh. I was sure I’d put some pound coins in here,’ Penny muttered, absentmindedly still searching her through her clutch. ‘Have you got two quid?’

A voice boomed over her shoulder as she looked through her bag one last time: ‘Just these two please, Darius.’ As a man passed two coats to the coat-check attendant, one brushed Penny’s bag, tipping it out of her hands and onto the floor.

She crouched down without thinking to collect the spilled contents before they were trampled on, as Sharon bristled, ‘Hey, excuse you! I think you owe my friend an apology, sir!’ She said the ‘sir’ sarcastically, making it clear the man who’d barged past them was anything but a gentleman. Good old Sharon.

Penny stood as the perpetrator turned to face them.

‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t see—’ the man started, a slightly odd melody to his words, like maybe English was his second language.

‘Oh!’ said Penny in surprise. ‘I know you!’

In front of her was the bread delivery guy who’d been in the café the other week – still handsome, but cheeks flushed now. Penny literally saw his recognition of her rise up to his eyes just seconds after she’d recognized him.

‘Hello,’ he said, coolly, obviously taken aback to see her. ‘I’m sorry about that. My spatial awareness obviously needs some work.’

‘No,’ Penny insisted, trying to sound kind and friendly. She didn’t want him to feel uncomfortable at the sight of her when it was he who’d been brave by giving her his number. ‘It was me – I wasn’t looking where I was stood. I was looking for change. I’m sorry.’

God, that face. Francesco’s face. And his voice, too – his voice gave Penny’s body a physical reaction. Her nipples bristled under her dress. Her breathing changed. Why hadn’t she texted him?