‘Listen.’ Natalie moves closer. When our faces are only a few inches apart, she says, ‘Nikhil shouldn’t have told you. Please don’t mention Liv’s name to anybody else, or anything about her wedding or …’ She breaks off, blushing. ‘It sounds stupidly melodramatic, but Liv and her boyfriend are getting married in secret. They’re not from the Cambridge area. Apparently all their friends and families have been just awful about them getting together – not supportive at all – so they decided to do it without telling anyone. I don’t know whether you know, but …’ She stops, looking hesitant.

I say nothing. I can afford to wait. She’s the one who needs something from me now: a promise that I’ll be discreet.

‘Ah, sod it, I might as well tell you. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t know already. Nikhil and I have a small business – I mean, like, tiny. We both have full-time jobs, and this is really just an occasional thing we do, but it’s important to us. When we met and fell in love, both our families cut up rough – mine because Nik’s brown and his because I’m white and not Hindu.’ Natalie shakes her head at the stupidity. ‘We got married in Vegas – yes, I know! – with strangers for witnesses. It was kind of horrible, you know?’

‘I can imagine.’ I assume that’s what someone who thinks like Natalie would say. Personally, I think a Vegas wedding with only strangers present sounds ideal. You don’t yet know and resent strangers, so they’re less likely to ruin things for you in a range of overt and subtle ways.

‘We could have invited some friends, but I didn’t want to try and patch together a wedding with some of the people close to us but not all,’ Natalie goes on. ‘The absence of our families would have been a huge embarrassment. Everyone would have been aware of it and trying not to mention it. Anyway, this is nothing to do with anything really, except to explain why Nik and I set up our business: Your Secret Wedding, it’s called. We help couples who’ve got no one else. We don’t just turn up and do the impersonal witness thing – we get to know them properly beforehand, join in with all the preparations. The idea is that by the time the wedding comes round, we’re proper friends.’

Natalie likes talking about her business. Her voice is full of energy. ‘It really works,’ she gushes. ‘Never fails. Nik and I are still good friends with all the couples we’ve helped. Liv and Chris aren’t just customers to us any more – they’re our good mates.’

‘They’re paying you, though?’