‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘But I think I probably need some fresh air,’ I continued, standing up and reaching for my coat. ‘I’m sure that’ll help. Can I get anything for anyone while I’m out?’

‘Very kind, but no thank you,’ said Roger.

‘You couldn’t get me a smoothie, could you?’ asked Luke. ‘I forgot to pick one up.’

‘Sure,’ I said, walking towards the door. ‘What flavour?’

‘Anything,’ he said, before looking towards Roger as the latter began to cough loudly and productively, ‘so long as it’s not green.’

Chapter 17

That evening, as I walked into The Cheshire Cheese following a day of emotional confusion and nervous anticipation, I wondered if my meeting with Jason might prove to be an anticlimax. In fact, a significant part of me was hoping that it would be exactly that. I hoped that he would turn up, repeat his spiel of twenty-two months ago, about his feelings for me being completely separate from his addiction to sex, and then bugger off; forever, this time.

Instinctively, however, I didn’t feel that that was going to happen. The tone of his text had been so different, so to-the-point and so wholly devoid of bullshit, that I was pretty sure he had something new to say. That being the case, I felt I had no option but to listen to whatever that might be – no matter how much I might not want to.

So I bought myself a glass of wine, sat down at the same table for two he had been occupying the night before, and I waited.

He arrived at just after six and spotted me immediately, raising a hand before going straight to the bar and buying himself a lager. He didn’t, I noticed, smile once. And he still wasn’t smiling as he walked towards me, placed his bottle on the table and sat down.

I watched as he removed his jacket, twisting in his seat to hang it with excessive care on the back of his chair. I knew him well enough to realise that the prolonged lack of both eye contact and conversation were a sign of significant nerves. Friends I’d introduced Jason to had usually included ‘laid-back’ in their initial assessment of him. It didn’t matter whether he was stuck in traffic, delivering a report or chatting over dinner, he habitually appeared relaxed, whether in fact he was or not. So for him to appear even slightly uncomfortable, as he did this evening, meant that internally he was a churning, chaotic mess.