‘I don’t believe it,’ I said. ‘You’re the Accidental Dater?’

Mary did not speak, she just kept staring at the handsome male model grinning inanely on the screen from behind his pubic beard.

‘I wonder if he really looks like that,’ Mary said eventually. ‘And I wonder if that is even his photograph, and I wonder if he has a wife and children at home, and I wonder what he and his friends would do to you if they got you behind locked doors and halfway to drunk or with a roofie dropped in your Sauvignon Blanc, and I wonder what kind of sick porn gets him hard.’

I shook my head, the words not coming, and I breathed long and hard.

‘This is our business, Mary.’

I was still holding her and finally she yanked her bruised arms away from me and rolled down her sleeves.

‘Are you fucking insane?’ I said. ‘Angel Eyes is our livelihood and you’re trashing it! What’s wrong with you?’

She looked at me, her eyes burning with resentment. ‘It was my idea, Tara,’ she said. ‘When we were a couple of young freelancers doing odd jobs on women’s magazines even as they were all folding, you knocking out your crappy little pieces on commitment while I showed the old people how to plug in their computer, back when we were wondering what we were going to do for the next fifty years … a dating app was my idea, Tara!’

I flashed back to those days and it was true that Mary – shy, homely Mary, the IT genius of the women’s glossy magazine market, my colleague-slash-friend Mary, my office buddy Mary, who was prone to comfort eating but who could code like some teenage tech bro from Silicon Valley – had initially suggested the idea of a dating app to me.

As I recall, we were standing in line at the Pret a Manger used by the painted worker bees of Vogue House, counting out the meagre coins for our lunch, when Mary came out with the immortal words, ‘We should do an app, Tara!’

‘But everyone was talking about doing an app in those days,’ I reminded her.

‘Yes, but we did it! And you loved the idea of having your own business – remember? Because of your dad, because you thought you had all this go-getting entrepreneurial DNA in your Anglo-Irish blood – but it would never have happened without me. A dating app, Tara – it will always be a bit of a joke to a woman like you, let’s face it.’

‘It’s not a joke to me! How I support my family is no joke, believe me. I’ve worked as hard as you for all this – and you’re wrecking it!’

She smiled slyly. ‘You don’t need a dating app because the men will always come and find you. But I believed in Angel Eyes and I made it work. All that stuff about starting the company so you could find someone for your friend, Ginger – it’s a great story, and maybe it even crossed your mind once that you could find Ginger someone, but none of this would have happened without me. I even went on dates! All those dates! That’s how much of a true believer I was! Did you ever need a dating app, Tara? Ever upload a Tinder profile in your pampered life? Didn’t think so. But we’re selling a lie here, Tara. There’s no romance out there, there’s no love to be found in the faces of strangers.’ She began absent-mindedly scrolling through the men on screen. ‘Not him … not him … not him …’