I didn’t like the fibbing. It’s horrible to pretend you are free when you are not. It’s rotten to trick someone into liking you.

‘It doesn’t,’ I said. ‘It can’t. But it encourages honesty. At least, I hope it does.’

‘You’re very idealistic.’

I shrugged. My Kirin arrived. I took that first glorious sip.

‘At Angel Eyes we never pretend there’s some magic formula to meeting someone,’ I said. ‘And we never promise happy endings, because everybody has to work out their happy ending for themselves. But we’re sincere, and we’re well run, and we can put our subscribers in touch with some like-minded body and soul who lives within a comfortable drive or commute. Then it’s all up to them. And there’s no stigma to online dating any more.’

James Caine leaned back on his bar stool.

‘So you had a good idea at the right time. Social lives revolving more around phones and the Internet and less around someone you meet in a bar or at the office. And you have a great slogan – Catch someone worth courting.’

I smiled. ‘Close. It’s actually Court someone worth catching. The other way round.’

‘Ah. Sorry.’

I took another sip of my beer. ‘We thought about doing it that way round but Court someone worth catching seemed playfully romantic while Catch someone worth courting sounds a bit too much like a stalker. We’re not here to help you catch someone. We’re here to help you court someone.’ We had both turned our bodies half-sideways to talk and I saw that our knees were almost touching. ‘And what do you do?’

‘I’m not an entrepreneur like you and most of the people at this conference. I’m just a suit. I work for an investment bank and I’m here to look for interesting start-ups, small businesses that have the potential to become big ones.’

He took out his wallet and gave me a business card. James Caine of Samarkand Wealth Management. Address at a top floor in one of the new glass towers next to London Bridge.

‘When you finally decide to sell your company, someone like me will come through the door to do the admin,’ he said.

I laughed. ‘I’m never going to sell my business.’

‘But if you did – if one day you went public, if you sold a percentage of your company in the form of shares to be traded in the Stock Exchange – then someone like me would turn up to arrange the IPO.’ He hesitated. ‘The Initial Public Offering.’

I picked up my beer. ‘Yeah, I know what IPO stands for.’

‘Of course you do. Sorry, sorry. It’s my jet lag. And how’s yours?’

‘The jet lag’s been bad. You don’t have any tips for that, do you?’

If James Caine tells me something about jet lag, I thought, then I know it will be good advice.

‘The best cure for jet lag is sunshine,’ he said with supreme authority. ‘Melatonin is the hormone that controls wakefulness in the body and sunshine is nature’s melatonin. Try to get out of your hotel room early tomorrow morning and put your body clock on the local time. How long are you in Japan?’