‘Nobody ever fancies me. I didn’t actually think you did. I dunno. This is cringey, but sometimes I feel … unloveable. Like everyone is going to have their turn except me.’

‘You’re very loveable, Penny Bridge. I promise you that.’

Penny pulled a face.

‘Hey,’ Francesco said urgently. ‘Listen to me. I know what came before me, but I’m here now, okay? And I’m not going anywhere.’

Penny shook her head as if trying to shake off her thoughts. ‘Urgh,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be sorry. It’s okay. I get it.’

‘I don’t think you do,’ she said. ‘I think you’ve never had to be alone.’

Francesco didn’t say anything.

‘My ex,’ she said. ‘Mo. I honestly thought … you know. I’m still so, so mad at him for leaving. He left me when I had nobody and nothing. Right after I got diagnosed. Why would somebody do that to a person they say they love, Francesco?’

‘I honestly don’t know,’ he said. Then he changed his tone. ‘If I ever met him …’ he said, in a silly voice.

Penny chuckled sadly.

‘I think I’m mad at myself for dating a coward,’ she continued. ‘We’d been together five years and the second my life didn’t revolve around him, he bailed. He couldn’t even wait until I’d had my radiotherapy. And it makes me so mad that I wasn’t even surprised. It was so common on the ward. There was one woman I met in treatment who’d hired a private investigator to prove that her husband was cheating on her. Isn’t that horrible? All these women with breast cancer married to men who can’t cope when somebody they say they love gets sick.’

‘Have you seen him since?’

‘Clemmie has. She bumped into him getting off a bus on Oxford Street and slapped him, and apparently he burst into tears.’

‘Ouch.’

‘That’s so not Clemmie, slapping somebody. I mean, it’s basically assault. But apparently he just cried and cried, and she called him pathetic, and not long after his mum called me to apologize. She said she was disgusted by him.’

It didn’t hurt her anymore – not really. It was weird how somebody she’d known for half a decade would disappear, not even in a cloud of smoke, simply … there one day, gone the next. Just like her dad.

Francesco stroked her arm. Eventually he said: ‘You know, if you were married to some bloke called Mo right now I wouldn’t have a hard-on pressed up against your leg in the fanciest hotel I’ve ever stayed in. And not to minimize your pain or anything but bloody hell I feel like the luckiest bastard in London.’