Cristian had been a Romanian mathematician who worked for Virgin Galactic, and for their second date they’d gone to a very promising sing-along showing of La La Land at the Hackney Picturehouse and then next door to the Wetherspoon’s. Penny had already decided that it was the night to have sex with him – she’d shaved her bikini line especially, and changed her bed sheets – but on her way back from the bathroom at the pub she’d seen the familiar yellow interface of the dating app on his phone, and realized he was obviously messaging somebody else whilst she was having a wee. Why had he lied after? He didn’t need to say that his ex was making moves on him. She was a big girl. She could withstand the truth. Obviously he was just not that into her. But why? Why weren’t any of them just not that into her? And why hadn’t she called him out on his terrible etiquette right there and then instead of finishing her drink and making vague grumbles about it ‘getting late’?

She knew the answer to that, actually. It’s because it felt like she was in an episode of Sex and the City – the one where Charlotte screams at a sky that should have been raining men, ‘I’ve been dating since I was fifteen! I’m exhausted! Where is he?!’ Penny was too exhausted to teach Cristian about basic manners – that’s why she’d finished the drink she’d paid for and left without bringing it up. She simply couldn’t be arsed. His text message after was unnecessary salt in the wound.

What is so wrong with me that no bloke wants to be my boyfriend? she wondered.

Last month she’d spent five nights in a row with Trevor, a deputy head of maths on half term who, once school started back up again, fell off the face of the earth until a random 1 a.m. text asking if he’d left his protractor at her flat. Before Christmas there’d been an Iraqi estate agent from Camberwell who’d really made her laugh – and she, him – but who was so inexplicably embarrassed by what he’d asked her to do to his prostate when he was drunk that he blocked not only her phone number, but everything across all social media, too. Before him there’d been a string of first dates that never seemed to become second ones, a summer off dating entirely, and three trips to the Skirt Club to sate her light bi-curiosity but that didn’t lead to much dating, either – Penny had figured out quickly enough that she was doomed with an attraction to men. (She did, though, get the name of an amazing seamstress in Canonbury, and made friends with two women who were now a couple and who she still saw every couple of months for drinks.)