‘Please, God, no,’ said Gen, raising her eyes heavenward.

‘He’s quite nice,’ Sophie said, leaning over Gen’s shoulder and looking at her phone screen. ‘Wonky nose, though.’

‘Oh my God, this is hideous.’ Jess hit the home button on the phone and the screen went blank.

I felt a bit weird. Maybe it was just the excess of female energy in the room or something, or the way Gen was looking at me as if she was sizing me up, but I didn’t like the idea of Jess on Tinder. There are loads of really dodgy characters out there.

The truth was there’s something inside me that feels slightly discomfited by the idea of Jess – London walking buddy, housemate, fan of midnight toast-and-Marmite snacks and chats over the kitchen table – dating anyone. I have absolutely no right to feel like that for about eight million reasons. One, because I’d made an executive decision at the beginning of this year that I wasn’t getting involved with anyone. And two, because of the whole Emma thing. Not that it’s a thing, but it’s basically my belt-and-braces guard against getting into a relationship with anyone else. I’m not the sort of person who’d mess around with more than one person at a time, even if it was all completely no strings attached. And it’s the perfect solution to avoid me getting caught up in a relationship and messing up my nursing course and my – already pretty screwed up – heart.

I knew all of that made me a hypocrite and an idiot, so what I needed was to duck out of this situation ASAP. ‘I’ll leave you three to it,’ I said, grabbing a can of Coke from the fridge so I wouldn’t have to come in and interrupt them again later.

But now here we are, at the end of our alternative Valentine’s evening. We’ve given up on the terrible horror film, which wasn’t even scary, and ended up watching a really freaky episode of The Haunting of Hill House on Netflix, and chatting about ghost stories we’ve heard, trying to think of scarier and scarier ones until we’re all completely spooked.

‘I’m going to be too scared to fall asleep tonight, at this rate,’ Jess says, getting up from the sofa. ‘I’m going to bed before I completely terrify myself.’

‘Yeah, me too,’ I say, and stand up, picking up an empty pizza box. Jess stacks another two in my arms.

‘Can you put them outside?’ she says, pulling a face. ‘There’s no way I’m going out there in the dark now.’

‘The man in black might get you,’ says Emma, in a creepy voice.

‘I’ll do it, don’t worry,’ I say.

‘Phew.’ Jess mops her brow, then gives a wave from the sitting room door. ‘Right, night all.’