‘It’s taking literal skin off my nose, Bewilderingly Angry Lady Who Lives Underneath Georgina.’

‘I’ll come down, five minutes and that’s your lot,’ I bellow. I don’t wait for any further Karen contribution, close the window and hammer down two flights of stairs to let Robin in the back door.

He seems to take unnecessary time to appear down the ginnel, making me think he and Karen are still picking over differences of opinion.

Great, it’ll be me who gets the Karen blowback from this stunt.

Robin eventually rounds the corner, brushing atomised milk chocolate from his navy Harrington jacket with the tartan lining.

He smells of the wind chill outside, and a pub. I can tell from the swagger as he enters the kitchen that he’s very pleased with this performance, and that he’s thinking it might even make something for a routine. To think I was hitherto impressed by this am-dram bollocks.

‘What do you want?’ I say, folding my arms, suddenly conscious I’m braless in my pyjamas and resenting this intrusion.

‘I wanted to talk to you and you won’t answer the phone to me, which I’m finding quite hurtful, to be honest.’

This man is priceless.

‘And you decided the obvious next step was lobbing stones at my window at gone one in the morning, and waking up my housemate too?’

‘Oof,’ Robin makes a face. ‘Jesus wouldn’t want her for a sunbeam, eh. Has the look of Angela Merkel.’

I shush him while making a furious scowl.

‘I was doing something romantic and unexpected, as a gesture. The kind of thing you want in a man. To show you I’m that man.’

I’ve never told Robin this, so I assume he’s either being sexist or he thinks ‘not sleeping with other people’ is some near-unattainable Mills & Boon ideal.

‘What do you want?’ I ask bluntly, to shake us out of this infuriating semi-ironic, artificial tone he’s trying to set. I would be amazed if this isn’t the first draft of something he’s working on.

‘I want a second chance.’

‘You’re not getting one. Why would you even want it? What happened to the whole “monogamy isn’t my bag, man” thing?’

‘Exactly!’ Robin says, eagerly, and I hiss ‘SHUT UP!’ as we are seconds away from another Karen explosion.

‘That’s what I mean. That’s not been me, it’s never been me and I thought you knew it wasn’t me …’ I grimace. ‘And then I thought: why isn’t it me? You’re an incredible girl. You’re fit, you’re smart. You make me laugh. Look at our repartee! And you know. I’m forty soon, for heaven’s sake.’

‘Wow, how inspiring. You’re running out of energy for dirty food play.’

Robin looks at me, with what I think he thinks is an intense, earnest longing.

‘Let’s try this. Let’s do it your way. I’m all yours.’

Jesus. He thinks I’m winning the jackpot – the chance to tame Robin McNee. I’m struggling to disguise how revolting I find it.

‘Robin, I found you having sex with someone else. I can’t get past it. I’m sorry if that’s brutal finality for you, but there we are. Shagging other people does tend to scare off boring normies like me, in a “forever” sort of way. I’m back off to bed now, so get out of my house.’

Robin shakes his head.

‘Do you think I care more about Lou? Is that it? That she’s eclipsed you? That’s not how men see sex.’

‘Oh, God, Robin, you’re not listening: get lost …’

‘Men and women, we’re totally different about it.’

‘Please!’ Even though I shouldn’t be baited, I let myself be baited.

‘We just are! There’s these ants that scientists have been studying, right. They get possessed by a fungus. The brain is still the ant’s brain, but the fungus is in control of its cells. The brain is in the driving seat but the fungus has the wheel. A man’s libido is a lot like that. We may know it’s wrong, and have strong feelings for someone else entirely. But when it’s offered, we have sex. Nine times out of ten, we take it,’ Robin says. ‘The fungus has the wheel.’

‘You’re seriously saying a takeover by hostile brain fungus made you have sex with someone else? Are you practising material on me?’

‘No!’ Robin rakes at his hair theatrically and tries to put his hand on the worktop, but the toaster is in the way, ‘Having a penis, and a job where you meet willing women, is like being tied to the village idiot during a beer festival. It’s relentless.’

‘And, what, women don’t have the same urges, that they can choose to act on, or not?’

‘They do, but I think women are less overwhelmed by them. More capable of being sensible. I include Lou in that; she had no idea how you felt. She said she’d never have slept with me if she’d known.’

‘Oh God, how convenient. Women should’ve stopped you. This is Rav’s cookie jar.’

‘What?’

‘Look, as anthropologically fascinating as this Men Are From Mars chat is, I don’t know why you’re telling me this. It’s irrelevant. I don’t know how many times I can tell you. We’re done.’

‘Listen. Maybe it didn’t come across enough but I am fairly fuckin’ crazy about you, Georgina Horspail.’

Robin’s genuinely got my name wrong in this declaration. I work hard to keep my face straight, as there’s no way he’s finding out what he just did, and having it for his act. This priceless jewel is destined for my friends’ collection of treasured Robin mementoes.

‘I don’t care. Now, I need to go to sleep, so if you wouldn’t mind,’ I hustle Robin out of the door, ‘Cheerio and thanks for the nice thoughts.’

As he starts to walk away, Robin turns, stagily, thoughtful finger to lips. Like Columbo trying to wrong-foot a suspect who thought the interrogation was over, and relaxed.

Robin’s planned every part of this, I realise – from throwing stones, to the ant fungus speech, to this pretence of an impromptu parting shot. Which means he knew I’d probably turn him down.

‘Georgina, I know I was wrong, to do what I did with Lou, but I can’t help feel this has come along at the right time, to give you a reason to go. It’s finding an unlocked door when you were rattling the handles, looking for an exit anyway.’

‘Given what I walked in on, more like opening an air lock on a plane. So what?’

‘My point is. Before this happened. Were you actually in love with me, did you want serious commitment?’

Oh so this was Robin’s whole game here. If I don’t feel enough to take him back then ergo he didn’t do anything wrong.

I’m far too tired and disorientated – not only by being woken, but by everything: having spent six months with someone I can’t fathom, don’t like, and brutally, I am noticing, don’t remotely fancy, plus family, plus Lucas – to know whether concession is a wise idea, if it plays into Robin’s hands. I just want him to go away and stay gone away. And my pride won’t allow me to play him back and claim I did care. As he knows, that’s a green light for him to carry on pestering me.

Ugh, the manipulation.

I shrug.

‘No, not really. As it turns out.’

‘Then what I did didn’t matter, did it?’

‘Not now, it doesn’t.’

I shut the door and lock it.

17

Your real problems are never the things you fret most about. This has an upside – sometimes you’ve fretted without cause.

My first shift at the Wicker is uneventful, and almost entirely devoid of Lucas. Not that that stops me from flickering and crackling like a faulty radio signal the whole time I’m there. I’m so desperate to prove him wrong in his initial prejudice that I make myself a model employee: diligent, quiet, hardworking, has to be told to take a break. Devlin is clearly slightly disconcerted that The Game Girl At The Wake has disappeared and tries to jolly me out of it. Eventually I accept that Lucas isn’t judging me, he isn’t noticing me at all. I am performing for no audience at all, or certainly not the one intended.

In what becomes a pattern during my next few shifts, he stays in the background while Devlin and I handle a steady trickle, soon a flood, of punters. The pub is in that tricky transition of shooing away the old undesirable clientele while letting the new ones know they’re not what they were. It’s got an Under New Management sign outside.

Yet my good fortune couldn’t last forever. As you might expect from a calendar date celebrating the birth of Satan, I discover at the last minute I’ll be working Halloween alone with Lucas McCarthy, as fifty per cent of the management will be in another country. And not just any Halloween: it falls on a Friday night this year.

‘I know it’s inconvenient as hell but I’ve got to dash back to the motherland. Sick child,’ Devlin explains to me. ‘It’s not fair to leave my wife on mopping-up duty any longer.’

‘Your family isn’t in Sheffield with you?’

‘Hahaha no, God no. Mo wouldn’t wear it. We have a four-year-old lad and a four-month-old. Did I not say? No, Luc and I have several boozers over there, too. The plan eventually is for this to be up and running without us and we’ll oversee it from over there. Although I dunno what Lucas wants to do, what with everything that’s happened. And he’s not got any squeakers, like me.’