‘Honestly,’ she said, ‘I’m not hungry.’ She couldn’t have touched a thing. She just wanted to go on drinking gin with him. She wanted to get slightly squiffy, a thing she ’d never done before in the middle of the day.

She wanted to put her arm through his.

‘It ’s been nice meeting you,’ he said.

‘A bit of luck.’

‘I think so too, Marie.’ He ran his forefinger between the bones on the back of her hand, so gently that it made her want to shiver. She didn’t take her hand away, and when she continued not to he took her hand in his.