Harri scowled at him.

‘He’ll be normal though,’ he went on. ‘Everyone knows there aren’t any weirdos on the Internet.’

He flashed a grin and shut the door.

Harri drove to Newcastle-under-Lyme, the market town on the outskirts of Stoke-on-Trent, and parked in the multi-storey near the cinema. She checked her make-up and fixed her hair. Butterflies filled her stomach and her heart thundered like a tiny drum as she thought about what might lie ahead.

The centre of Newcastle-under-Lyme is pedestrianized, with shops and cafes either side of a broad pavement. Harri’s nerves grew as she walked the red bricks towards the Guildhall, a large Victorian building that marked the very heart of town. There was a cafe on the ground floor where she was due to meet Ben. She passed old couples, young lovers holding hands, and parents pushing prams, and felt her loneliness more keenly, suddenly aware she was surrounded by the consequences of love. Only today was different. Today brought hope she might have found someone.

She hurried to her date, not wanting to keep Ben waiting, but a small part of her longed to turn around, to run away. She was afraid she might not like him, nor he her, and she wasn’t sure she could cope with another disappointment.

She forced herself on, and her stomach was churning by the time she entered the Clockhouse, the cafe that occupied the Guildhall’s clock tower. There weren’t many people inside, and Harri recognized Ben immediately. He looked even better than his profile picture. The interest she’d felt online became the electricity of attraction in the flesh, and fear gave way to excitement as she walked towards the table near the back of the cafe.

He smiled when he saw her, and his grin lit up her world. He stood, and she saw he was tall and muscular. Not heavily built, but athletic.

She’d never believed in love at first sight, maybe because it hadn’t happened to her, but as she moved towards this man, profound knowing hit her, reverberating deep within her soul, and she felt an attraction that was impossible to resist. There was lust, the intrigue of exploration, of getting to know a new person, but there was something more, something deeper that came from her ancient, primal self. It was as though she’d found the part of her that was missing.

She hadn’t read Shakespeare for years, but his words came to her, ‘No sooner met but they looked, no sooner looked but they loved.’

She had always dismissed them as a shorthand for what had been, for her, the arduous and ultimately disappointing journey of falling in love. But she understood them now. They signified the instant attraction felt when a match was so perfect it seemed as though the gods themselves were smiling down on the couple. Judging by the grin on Ben’s face and the bright shimmer in his amber eyes, he felt something similar.

He tried to pull out a chair, but the legs caught the edge of an uneven floor tile and sent it toppling over. They both lunged for it before it hit the floor, and their hands touched as they caught the chair back. Her skin tingled at his touch.