Fleur planned to meet them at the salon, and Minnie, Bev and Leila were walking together from the Tube station. Getting off at Chalk Farm made Minnie feel she was stepping back in time, as though she was seeing the world through a sepia lens. She looked up at the window of the flat she’d grown up in; it looked just the same. Now, as they passed the railway bridge, which led to Primrose Hill, her eyes found themselves drifting in a new direction. Quinn’s flat must only be a five-minute walk from here.

It had been six days since the kiss and there had been just one text exchange between them. She’d hung around all morning on Monday, waiting for him to come back and collect his car. Eventually, some guy in a peaked hat had turned up, who turned out to be Quinn’s private driver. His driver? He’d sent his driver.

Minnie had felt something was off as soon as he left that day. Maybe it was her parents arriving, maybe he’d sobered up, maybe it was the zoo all over again. When she still hadn’t heard from him by Tuesday evening she’d sent him a text.

‘You have a driver?’

She’d deliberated for hours over what to send. In the end she’d just gone for those four words, something simple to remind him she existed. His reply had been cold and underwhelming.

‘Yes. Sorry, crazy week at work. Maybe see you at the ponds.’

No kiss. No jokes. No sense of him at all. Reading it late that night made Minnie’s insides tense up into a familiar grinding knot and she couldn’t sleep for thinking about it.

The next day she’d tried to be positive. Maybe he really did have a crazy work week? What did she expect – that after kissing her he’d suddenly want to spend every minute of his time with her? She noticed he’d said ‘maybe’ see you at the ponds. Would he even be there tomorrow if she went? However much she went around in circles thinking about it, something about the silence from him this week just didn’t feel right.

‘Walking down the street with Leila is like going out with a celebrity, isn’t it?’ said Bev, interrupting Minnie’s spiralling thoughts.

Leila was wearing a bright green 1950s dress with yellow roses all over it. She had freshly coloured rainbow-striped hair, and wore bright red lipstick. Bev was right; Leila was drawing the heads of everyone they passed.

‘It’s nice to be noticed,’ said Leila, doing a little skip along the road.

Bev was wearing black jeans and a T-shirt that said: ‘Straws Really Suck’. Minnie didn’t even know what she was wearing; with all the talk of clothes she had to look down to check she had actually got dressed this morning. Jeans and a blue T-shirt, phew.