‘It’s just, you really haven’t changed since camp. It’s so strange. The way your face moves – how your eyebrows jump up and down your face, all expressive. It’s mad.’

I giggled. ‘My eyebrows?’ I wiggled them suggestively.

‘Like I said.’ He grinned. ‘It’s mad. Let me know about a non-date, anyway. It’d be cool to hang out, but no pressure.’

I wanted to find the words to accept it, there and then, but I didn’t feel brave enough. The conversation had taken a turn. I wanted to spend the whole day with him and have him tell me more stories about my eyebrows at camp, and remind me of the late-night rehearsals and talk about the time he came with Jasmine and me, and another boy, too, whose name I couldn’t remember, out on the lake for a midnight swim, the water deep and cool, the moon lighting up our faces like we were the stars of our own private show.

I couldn’t stop thinking about Yak Yak, and Bugsy Malone, and because of all that, Patrick. When I saw him at bootcamp and he made a beeline to talk to me, I planned to ask him outright if he wanted to go out for a drink, or dinner, just to reminisce. When it came down to it, it took bumping into him twice more before I actually did it.

‘I just really want to catch up,’ I explained, feeling ridiculous. ‘Theatre camp, midnight adventures. All of it.’

He replied: ‘Whatever the reason you want me at the same place at the same time as you, on purpose, I’ll be there. It’ll be fun.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Excellent. Tomorrow? Oh no. Wait. It’s Saturday tomorrow. You probably already have weekend plans.’

‘Nope,’ he said, breezily. ‘I’m yours.’

‘Great. Tomorrow afternoon. One platonic old-friend-non-date it is!’ I don’t know what made me say that. I just wanted to be clear. Dating was absolutely not on the agenda. I was dead inside. It just occurred to me that maybe I’d somehow made it sound romantic or loaded with intention. I hadn’t been single in a decade – at university any time spent with a boy would have been considered a potential hook-up. That was all I was going off.

‘One platonic old-friend-non-date indeed,’ he said. ‘Let me give you my phone number?’

‘I don’t have my phone on me, actually.’ I thought of it sitting in the drawer of my bedside table.

‘Give me yours. I’ll text you.’

‘Do you think we could email? My phone is my enemy at the moment.’

‘Email,’ he considered. ‘Absolutely. How very 2002. Very fitting.’