‘You two? Together? Together, like a couple?’ Tristan says. He looks completely shocked and not at all happy with this news. I toss my hair a little. Maybe I don’t regret it. Maybe Penny is a genius.

‘Yes,’ Jesse says again and, to his credit, his voice has not wavered. He is steady. He is committed to the lie. He is enjoying Tristan’s outrage as much as I am.

‘Oh my god,’ Tristan says.

I can see Henry, Penny and Harper watching us in fascination. Now that he’s not involved, Henry looks like he’s happily settling in for the show. He gives me a little thumbs up. Harper stands up and joins us.

‘Hi Tristan, I’m Harper,’ she says. ‘How do you know Brooke?’ she adds, which I appreciate. Setting the groundwork of making sure he knows I have never spoken of him or thought of him again and certainly didn’t discuss him tonight or any night previously.

‘Brooke was my high-school girlfriend,’ Tristan says, all nostalgic-sounding, as if we are at our school’s twenty-year reunion not barely six months into our post-school lives.

Before Harper can say anything else, Tristan turns back to me. ‘So. Wait. I’m sorry. How did you two get together? Because this is wild,’ he says.

I need an amazing getting-together story. No, wait, I don’t. Keep it simple. Simple is believable. But I could add some fun, romantic details. He can’t prove me wrong. I’ll say I fell off a boat and Jesse dived in to save me, no, maybe Jesse fell off the boat and I saved him, or probably neither of us should fall off a boat but I feel attached to the admittedly very improbable boat idea now.

‘We moved into the same share house, and started spending a lot of time together, and it just happened one night,’ Jesse says.

Fine. That sounds normal and believable. It doesn’t sound romantic though. I need Jesse to be a little more ‘head over heels in love’, and less ‘her room is near the kitchen and it’s convenient to stop there after I get a snack’.

‘Wow. Wow. I just can’t get over this. Brooke used to, I mean, she really didn’t—’ Tristan stops himself from outright saying that I hated Jesse. I am starting to remember that I did complain to Tristan about Jesse on occasion. Multiple occasions. Tristan wasn’t at Gretel’s party, and I never told him about what happened there, although he may have heard it from others. But I did tell him Jesse and I had once had a fight that ended our friendship.

‘Well, you know, people change, feelings change,’ I say quickly, to head off anything further Tristan might say on that topic.

‘So you’re living together? This is really serious then?’ Tristan says.