That last part gave me heart palpitations, as well as a pretty strong snapshot of both the nature of their relationship and Noah’s flimsy moral fibre. He was using her. Using her, and cheating on her. Then came a scouring of Yelp, Google and Tripadvisor. Nothing but glowing reviews.

By 5 pm, my nerves were frayed and I needed a glass of wine. But when I went to pour myself a glass there wasn’t any. There was no food nor (more concerningly) coffee either.

So here I am, wandering into the supermarket with a wet umbrella and jeans that are sticking to my legs from rain, wondering, as I pick up a shopping basket, whose idea it was to put fake greenery on the ceiling. The air is filled with the bright sound of coins jangling as they’re dropped into the cash register, muted conversations, fridges humming and the squeak of soles of shoes sticking to a floor that smells of badly rinsed disinfectant.

To my right is an orange juice dispenser and a tray of day-old pastries, to my left is the cashier, standing in front of rows of liquor and stationery, today’s newspapers laid out in front of her. Gone are the photographs of Matilde Beaumont and in their place lies a picture of a man with glasses and a big, bold headline I can’t really understand. It’s something to do with immigration. And in front of those papers, weaving a line, are three customers.

An elderly man with a walking stick, a woman in a short skirt and then, just behind her: Thomas.

Shit.

He’s wearing dark blue jeans and a black long-sleeved jumper with a big white Endroit logo on the back – a not-so-subtle reminder that he works for a proper media company and I work for an online magazine and I should have just kept him as a contact and not fucked him.

I rush towards the safety of the baguettes; I never replied to his just let me know you’re okay text, so I scuttle past, making sure he doesn’t look back and see me. The last thing I want right now is to be drawn into an awkward conversation about how my parents have enjoyed their visit to Paris. But Thomas doesn’t look up. He’s too busy smiling down at his phone, typing, like someone just sent him the funniest text in the universe. This should make me happy – now I don’t need to find a new laundromat – but for some reason it doesn’t.

I grab a baguette and move past the chocolates, grab an apple, a tomato and a bunch of bananas from the trays of over-priced fruit and vegetables to my right, and then head down the alcohol aisle. I can see the lady with her tabby cat up ahead of me as I pick up a bottle of my favourite red and a few little bottles of Scotch. Then it’s cheese, creamed spinach and coffee. I carry my heavy basket back to the front of the shop, peering around the corner to see whether Thomas is still there. Wondering whether maybe I should talk to him after all.