‘What’s going on Jack? Why are you being so rude?’

He pulled her aside, out of sight from the rest of the group and leaned into her. She could smell the alcohol on his breath and realised that he was even drunker than she’d thought.

‘Harry fancies you,’ he said.

‘Okay,’ she replied. She wasn’t sure if it was a statement or an accusation.

‘Do you fancy him?’

She was confused and irritated by the confrontational tone in his voice.

‘What does it matter to you if I do?’ She wondered if he was upset that she’d been flirting with his work colleagues. Perhaps he was worried about his reputation.

‘It just matters to me,’ he replied, looking intensely at her with those ridiculous piercing eyes that had ripped many a young woman’s soul into tiny little pieces over the years.

‘Why?’

‘Because I love you.’

‘Oh, come off it, Jack, you’re drunk,’ she said, a lot more dismissively than she felt. Inside she was erupting with shock, joy and disbelief. Could he really mean it?

‘I’m not that drunk, Angie, I know how I feel. You’re the most beautiful, intelligent, ambitious and all together amazing woman I have ever met in my life.’

He tried to kiss her then, but she put her hand on his chest to stop him. ‘Jack, I don’t want you to do anything that you might regret. Sleep on it, okay, and we’ll talk tomorrow.’

She kissed him on the cheek, grabbed her bag, said goodbye to his friends and left the bar. Outside she leaned up against a wall to catch her breath. Had that really just happened? She loved him, of course she did, but was it really possible that he felt the same way or was it just the beer and a touch of the green-eyed monster talking? As she walked to the tube station, she felt like she had somehow entered a parallel universe, one where being with Jack was a possibility rather than a fantasy, and she wanted to grasp it with both hands. But she was terrified in case it was all a mistake and life returned to its normal state tomorrow.

It took her hours to fall asleep. She lay in bed, wondering how she had ended up falling so madly in love with this boy. She had always been so pragmatic, so able to keep people at arm’s length, but now she was completely helpless. The next morning she woke up with the sensation that something monumental had happened and felt a rush of joy when she remembered what it was, followed by a sinking feeling that it was still a dream that wouldn’t come true.

Two hours later, as she was staring at her phone, he turned up at her flat looking sheepish, handed her a bunch of flowers and asked her to go for a walk with him.

‘I was actually just about to go shopping,’ she told him and immediately kicked herself for being churlish. But the truth was that she didn’t want to go for a walk with him. She was too afraid of what he had to say, having already guessed that the flowers were an apology. He was going to tell her that he was a drunk idiot who was talking rubbish and didn’t mean a word he said.