If he had not needed this job quite so desperately, the waiter would have stayed at home. Instead, here he was at nine o’clock on a Saturday, shepherding customers to tables and avoiding interrogation about the contents of the hunter’s stew. At least he’d escaped the damp, cracked walls of his flat. There were far fewer unwanted memories here.

“How kind of you to drop in, James,” his corpulent boss had remarked before handing him a notepad. “We were forgetting what you looked like.”

There wasn’t much to forget. The waiter, hardly an Adonis at the best of times, had a jagged scratch stretching under his chin where his hand had slipped this morning.

The kitchen was busy tonight, though it was chiefly occupied with catering for one party: a baby shower, of all things. The waiter considered this a personal insult, ignoring the heavily pregnant woman at the head of Table Seven, hands folded in her lap as her friends cooed around her.

Yesterday, the woman he had loved for over two years had surged forwards and seized his hands. He had looked down, noting distantly that her nails were a soft, bluish pink, rimed with semicircles of dirt. He’d spent so long telling himself that she had hidden virtues until he couldn’t see past his own illusion.

The party laughed again over some industry joke, returning him to the oppressive heat of the restaurant. It was the kind of laugh favoured by the upper class: ringing off the silver spoons concealed in their mouths, humiliatingly incongruous in this shabby restaurant.

Unexpectedly, the neighbour of the mother-to-be was holding court, her bobbed hair gleaming darkly as she skilfully weaved guests in and out of conversations, unaware of the pregnant woman’s hand inching across the table. The waiter watched as, unnoticed, she raised a glass vaguely and bent her head to take a sip. Her hair swung forwards at the motion, veiling her expression. The friend cut off her oration and snatched the drink.

“Whoops, darling! Mustn’t let Baby get his hands on this,” she announced to the room at large, placing the glass firmly out of reach.

“Do you think it has hands yet?” asked another friend. The table dissolved into chatter once again, leaving the woman to stare wistfully out of the window.

They had been in bed when she’d told him. Her curled in his arms, him staring blankly at the peeling paint, both cocooned in their reunion. The wounds inflicted healing slowly, prompted by her head on his shoulder, her hands clasped in his, her hair in his face. Not that he’d particularly missed the latter.

She had turned to him then, her face glowing in the grey streetlight that discoloured his room.

“I’m pregnant,” she’d whispered into the gloom, her teeth flashing, elongated by shadow.

The baby was not his. He knew that. He weaved through tables, avoiding a colleague he did not much like. Here was not the place to decide, though he couldn’t think where was. He would do his job and go home – the rest could come later.

Back at Table Seven, the present-giving had begun: parcels tossed along the table, booties held up to faces, rattles and dummies and blankets admired. All were piled in front of the woman, offerings to a reluctant fertility idol.

She had left him. Long before he’d admitted it and changed the key to their flat. His flat now. She had smiled when she’d told him. A smile that had quickly faded.

“I don’t understand, Jamie. This is what you wanted.”

No. Not now. Not with her.

The woman was leaning forward, smiling vaguely at her second-in-command. The swell of her stomach pressed against the table’s edge. He had fallen victim to those tables before, had discovered how the rustic effect of their wood-grained tops belied the wicked edges and winced on her behalf. But she had not noticed.

He headed to the kitchen, passing along Table Fourteen’s order and resisting the urge to wheeze at the sudden change in humidity. Two years in this job and he couldn’t adjust to the way the air clung to his skin, trailing after him on the otherwise solitary walk home.

She could be waiting for him again. His cheek twitched at the thought. He would trudge back to face her inevitable screams that he was cold, that he was indifferent, that he was selfish. But now she wanted him to make the most selfless decision he could imagine.

The woman’s husband had arrived to pick her up. There was a chorus of Aww and Isn’t he sweet, followed by a particularly strident He seems too good to be true, doesn’t he, Charlotte? The brunette friend glanced at the rather mousy woman, disapproval settling into her thin, raised eyebrows.

“Honestly, Eloisa, what are you implying? It’s not as if she doesn’t deserve him.” She gave a tense laugh and took Charlotte’s arm, leading her to the door then fussing with her coat and lingering farcically long.

The husband slung a protective arm around her shoulders, apparently taking over. He then carried out lengthy farewells with each guest, his wife on one arm and her friend stationed in front of the other, making no effort to adjust his volume or shift to allow easy passage to Table Three.

Still, there was room, so the resigned waiter began to edge past. At which point he noticed Charlotte’s white-knuckled grip on her friend’s sleeve behind her husband’s coat. Years of practice kept the waiter’s face blank, and he sailed past in a show of supreme disinterest.

It’s only when he walks home himself that he feels sorry for her. Pity curdles in him for the trapped woman. He must go home to his own decision, ready and waiting for him in that grey flat. He hugs his coat to himself, shivering as kitchen vapour rises from his skin, heavy and damp in the cold night air.

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