She had more or less forgotten about him but then he spoke to her again, his voice low but clear. He had a posh accent with no trace of Geordie in it.

‘You’re good at this,’ he said, smiling broadly at her and pushing his hair away from his face. He was older than her, she thought, but not by much.

‘At what?’ she asked without stopping what she was doing.

‘Your job,’ he said. ‘You’re fast and efficient. You tot up the bill in your head rather than on the till and you’re always right. You are friendly but not over the top. You keep a tidy bar and you have a smile for everyone.’

Now she was flattered in spite of herself. It was all true. Everybody thought her job was just pulling pints but there was a lot more to it than that. It was rare that anyone acknowledged it, though, least of all Gary the landlord.

‘Thanks,’ she said, a blush pinking her cheeks. ‘Ready for another?’

‘Actually, I think I’ll switch to beer,’ he said. ‘You can have too much of a good thing.’

She pulled his pint, conscious of his eyes on her arm as it flexed to pull the pump back. She was proud of her arms, the muscles taut and smooth and the skin kept tanned by trips to the sun-bed parlour down the road. She assumed he would be imagining what the rest of her body was like and so she straightened her spine and sucked in her stomach.

‘What time do you finish?’ he asked.

Men were so predictable.

‘Around 11.30,’ she said.

‘Can I take you for a drink?’ he asked.

‘Not much open after closing except the clubs, and I don’t fancy that,’ she said. ‘There’s a greasy spoon round the corner that stays open for the taxi drivers. We could go there if you like?’

She assumed that he would baulk at that and then suggest the bar of whichever hotel he was staying in – he wouldn’t have wandered into this pub if he knew his way around town – but he just nodded.

‘You here on business, like?’ she asked.

‘Have you got me marked down as a travelling salesman?’ he asked. There was that twinkle again.

‘Well?’ she said. ‘Are you?’

‘Nope.’

He didn’t give her any other details and she wasn’t about to gratify him by asking. Melissa was nobody’s fool. She just shrugged. It was nothing to her what he did, but part of her was glad that he was classier than just a salesman.

He looked at his watch, a heavy silver thing that looked like the ones she saw advertised on the sides of buses.

‘So, shall we go to this café of yours later then?’ he asked, and Melissa surprised herself by nodding. ‘And I haven’t even asked your name. You must forgive me.’

‘It’s Melissa,’ she said. ‘And yours?’