Though I’m not sure my blood alcohol level can be blamed entirely on my mother.

Claudia tried to chat to me earlier; cornered me by the bar while I waited for my first drink to ask about my ‘issues with roses’. I’m not making this up, those were her exact words. I escaped that in favour of a dull conversation with Helena about all the roadwork being done in Paris – a conversation that led to the skolling of piña colada number one and a swift ordering of number two. Next came a few polite chats with freelancers, another trip to the bar, and then a stressful half hour, nodding and smiling and staying mute, as I listened to two women talk first about an upcoming wedding (woman one) and then terrifying sounding birthing options (woman two). Halfway through piña colada number three, they paused for breath, turned to me and asked the question I’d been dreading all along: were babies in my plan?

Sometimes I wonder whether other people watch a different news channel to me. Because yesterday it was Matilde Beaumont. Today I learned that a multinational was being sued for knowingly selling a drug with undisclosed side-effects. Tomorrow there will be something else. We live in a world where for a great swathe of people, ‘kindness’ and ‘empathy’ are nothing more than hashtags used to atone between one hate-storm and another. How could I subject another being to all that? And given the transience of it all, what would be the point anyway?

But, even though all that is true, one of them was pregnant and that’s not the kind of thing you point out to a pregnant lady. That would make me an arsehole. So instead I just said, ‘Maybe if I meet the right guy,’ and then suggested we pose for a photograph. By the time we’d selected which one to use, agreed on a filter and chosen the hashtags – #paris #bignight and #ifyoulikepinacoladas – they’d forgotten about me and were back to talking about complicated napkin folds and seating plans.

So now I’m sipping drink number four, talking to the person I wanted to talk to all along. Stan. The news guy. The guy who has the job I want.

But, honestly, he’s pissing me off.

He’s watching me pull my skirt over my knees with smug, light blue eyes, as he sips on a Guinness.

‘It’s important that we have people like you on staff,’ he says. ‘Not everyone wants to face what’s going on in the world. Some people just want to go and see a good film. Talk about things like pretty pictures.’ He takes another sip. ‘You know what you should do?’

Oh good. Nothing I love more than a man telling me what I should do. Because, you know, he probably knows better than I do how I should live my life.

‘You should cover more opera like Wesley. Elevate things.’

I want to throw my drink at him and tell him I have some pretty strong thoughts about what he should do too, but I don’t. I just say: ‘So tell me about this girl. The one that went missing.’