You’re perfect, is what I wanted to say but, of course, I didn’t. We talked on for a few more hours, with me utterly entranced by her every word. I told her about my work and my little flat and the time that my dad took a belt to me for letting a homeless man have a kip in the garage at our house. She told me about the seaside hotel she grew up in and how she once caught her dad trying to have it off with a guest in one of the bedrooms. I told her about the time I took a free kick in a football match and the trajectory of the ball’s flight was so beautiful that the referee blew his whistle and insisted on a break for prayers. She told me that when she was a teenager, she and a friend had spray-painted the words ‘Shit the Fuck Up!’ on the boards of Brighton’s West Pier. (Apparently you could still see the discolouration in the planks where they had struggled to remove it.) I told her about the landlord of my bedsit in Manchester, where I studied law, who used to collect the rent every Sunday evening and insist that I played a full album of my choice while he sat on the only chair listening and eating peanuts. He wouldn’t say a word other than to thank me once the music was finished. She told me about the time she went to the cinema on New Year’s Eve to see the Disney version of Robin Hood. She was the only person in the screening and, halfway through, one of the staff brought her a free hot dog and a Coca-Cola and gave her a sympathetic pat on the back. She said it was the best New Year’s Eve she had ever had.

After I had finished my steak and long chip, she took my empty plate back to the bar on her way to the toilet. I found this overwhelmingly touching and kind. She never took another look at her book and in the end I was sat with her rather than near her. At around 10:30pm I asked her if she wanted a final drink. I didn’t know whether I should ask for her number, offer to walk her home or just say goodbye and hope that we met again sometime. Getting more drinks was the best way of putting off this choice. She wanted another fizzy wine and so I pushed my way through the clamour at the bar and ordered our drinks.