Some women took up kickboxing. Some women did Ashtanga yoga. Or ran marathons. Took up guerrilla knitting, extreme baking, even basket weaving. Other women found lots of different ways to deal with their stress, but it seemed the only way Posy could deal with the stress, the utter pain in her arseness that was Sebastian, was to unleash her frustration with him on the page.

There was something deeply satisfying about turning him into the blackest scoundrel, the most villainous rogue, the er, most salacious seducer of innocent, well-bred ladies and even now, as she tried to cross Tottenham Court Road, Posy was already mentally drafting the next chapter of Ravished by the Rake.

She hadn’t even had time to change out of the now-hated black dress. She’d been in such a rush, after several texts from Verity and Nina demanding to know where the hell she was, that Posy had done nothing more with her face than chuck some tinted moisturiser at it and apply mascara and lip-gloss with little enthusiasm or skill. She’d also left one of the foam rollers in her hair and had only realised when a man had stopped her on the street to tell her. It was now stuffed in her handbag and she wasn’t sure that her hair was falling in tousled waves.

Posy wasn’t sure about anything any more, except that she’d rather be prostrate on her sofa and halfway down a bottle of wine. Instead she was on her way to a party where she’d have to be witty and engaging in order to attract a man pleasing to the eye, who could maintain a conversation, with a view to going on a series of dates before they decided that they were in a relationship and then they could stay in and enjoy a bottle of wine together so that no one (especially Nina) would be able to judge her. Once you were one half of a couple, then staying in on a Saturday night was suddenly a valid lifestyle choice.

Sebastian would never dream of staying in on a Saturday night, Posy thought as she glared viciously at the traffic lights that had the temerity to still be on green when she wanted to cross the road. He’d be out with one of his women, or on a mission to find a new woman, all blonde and willowy and forbidden to speak, so he could do all manner of depraved things to her until another woman even blonder and willowier caught his interest.

‘Bloody Sebastian, get out of my head,’ Posy muttered as she hurled herself at the door of the Swedish café on Great Titchfield Street where lovely Stefan from the deli around the corner from Bookends was celebrating his birthday.

‘Posy! At last! Come and give me a birthday hug,’ Stefan demanded as Posy stood on the threshold of the café looking around for Nina and Verity but mostly scowling.

The scowl was instantly wiped off her face as six foot two inches of muscled Swede enveloped her in his arms. Posy had no choice but to hug Stefan back, not that it was a chore. Stefan’s hugs were consistently right up there in her top five of all-time best hugs.

‘Happy Birthday,’ she said, feeling rather bereft as Stefan released her. ‘Sorry I’m late. Also sorry but I didn’t have time to wrap your present.’

Stefan was going to properly celebrate his thirtieth birthday in New York for a long weekend with lovely Annika, his girlfriend, and so Posy had found a foodie guidebook that listed all the best places to eat and drink in the Tri-State area. She’d even paid for it. Cost price, but that was one of the perks of working in a bookshop.

‘Nina and Verity are over there,’ Stefan said, pointing at a table in the corner where Nina had a tall Scandinavian man on either side of her and was looking as if all her birthdays and Christmases and Easters had come at once. Even Verity, fortified by a disco nap and whatever was in her glass, was looking pretty chipper. ‘And you have to meet my friend, Jens – I’ve been dying to get you two in the same room. Hey! Jens! Over here!’

Before Posy could adjust her settings from frazzled and annoyed to witty and engaging, a man detached himself from a nearby group of people and came over with a friendly smile on his face.

‘Jens, this is Posy, who runs the bookshop round the corner from the deli. Posy, this is Jens who comes from a town in Sweden called Uppsala and teaches English.’

They shook hands. Jens wasn’t quite as intimidating as some of Stefan’s other male friends who were doing little to dispel the myth that all Swedish men looked like Vikings. Hot Vikings. He wasn’t quite so tall and fair as most of the other men in the room. Posy didn’t have to crane her neck to look in his eyes, which admittedly were as blue as the cool, clear waters of a fjord. He had light brown hair, which he was nervously running his fingers through, and he wasn’t hot so much as warm. When Jens smiled at Posy, suddenly she didn’t feel that she had to be witty or engaging, but could simply be herself.

‘Stefan and Annika have told me so much about you, Posy,’ he said. ‘Is it true that you can quote the whole of Pride and Prejudice from memory?’

There were so many far worse things that Stefan and Annika could have shared with Jens, like Posy’s preference for thickly spreading cream cheese over Stefan’s delicious cinnamon buns. ‘Maybe not the whole of it,’ she admitted. ‘That’s my friend Verity’s party trick, but I do find that there’s an appropriate quote from Pride and Prejudice for most situations.’

‘Oh, really.’ Jens cocked his head, but not in an arrogant, run-his-eyes-up-and-down-Posy’s-body-only-to-find-it-seriously-lacking kind of way but in a way that encouraged her to elaborate on her theory. ‘Give me an example.’

‘Well, when I find that someone’s left a wad of chewing gum stuck to one of the shelves in the shop, which happens quite a lot, I usually say, “Are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted?”’ Posy explained and Jens laughed. Then Nina caught sight of Posy and waved and it seemed perfectly natural when Jens took her arm and steered her through the crowded room, found her a chair and offered to get her a drink.

Jens was lovely. Absolutely lovely. And it had nothing to do with the number of elderflower aquavit martinis Posy managed to guzzle down. He taught English in a secondary school in Portobello, which was no surprise because although he was Swedish he spoke English better than most English people Posy knew. They had a long chat about Hamlet and how William Shakespeare obviously hadn’t known anything about Denmark, and then Jens tried to teach Posy some Swedish drinking songs, because he’d had rather a lot of martinis by then too.

It was very difficult for Posy to get her tongue around the hard Swedish vowels so they settled for shouting the words to their favourite ABBA songs at each other. Then at the end of the night, when they were all standing on the corner outside the restaurant, Jens asked for Posy’s number.

‘Because I will call you,’ he said directly. ‘I don’t understand the English reserve. I like you and I want to get to know you better, without so much aquavit involved. Do you like me too?’

Posy was English and reserved but there had been an awful lot of aquavit involved so she was able to say without much blushing, ‘Yeah, it would be nice to see you again.’

Jens nodded and smiled that warm smile of his. ‘We’ll go on a proper date.’

He tapped her number into his phone then called it to make sure he hadn’t missed a digit, and kissed her on the cheek before setting off with his friends to get a taxi back to Hackney.

Posy had insisted that Nina and Verity stay the night. Verity had no head for alcohol and was giggling every time she tried to speak, and Nina lived in Southfields, which was about as far from central London as you could get while still being in London. ‘And when Sam gets back from Pants tomorrow, we can force him to make us tea and cheese toasties,’ Posy said, not that either of them needed much convincing, when the ten-minute walk back to Bookends was far more enticing than taking the nightbus.

‘A very successful evening, ladies,’ Nina said with some satisfaction as she and Posy each took hold of one of Verity’s arms to stop her veering off course. ‘Verity, you got drunk and socialised, well done. And Posy, you got a phone number! See! You can’t wait for the right man to suddenly appear on your doorstep, you have to go out into the wild and hunt him down.’

‘That’s what the internet is for,’ Posy reminded her, though it was much less terrifying to go on a first date with someone you’d already met in real life than turning up to meet some stranger who looked ten years older, five inches shorter and three stone heavier than his profile picture.

Anyway, it was still only the first week of March and she already had a date, so Posy didn’t have to worry about finding a stranger on a dating site to have a drink with this month. And Nina had pulled, because Nina always did, though being Nina she’d managed to find the seediest-looking man in the place and lock him down. He was a friend of a friend, covered in Death Metal tattoos and scowly of face; the one man at the party who didn’t look as if he lived on a healthy diet of lingonberries, herrings and meatballs or swam in fjords and rode a bicycle around the pollution-free streets of Stockholm.

‘Just my type,’ Nina said when Verity commented on his surliness. ‘You know how I love the surly ones. And didn’t someone ask for your number, Very?’

‘They did, but I think my boyfriend would have something to say about that.’ Verity giggled. ‘Peter Hardy, oceanographer – he’s very possessive.’

‘Are we ever going to meet him?’ Posy asked but Verity merely shrugged as she always did when the subject of her boyfriend came up.

‘Yeah, sure,’ she mumbled. ‘When he’s not on the other side of the world graphing oceans. Anyway, Nina, aren’t you seeing Piers? Didn’t you say that he was going to take you up the Shard?’

Nina pretended to look shocked. ‘Up the Shard?’ she repeated. ‘Now that’s a euphemism if ever I heard one! And you a vicar’s daughter too, Very. You should be ashamed of yourself!’

‘You’re still seeing him?’ Posy tried to make her voice neutral. ‘I didn’t realise you were that keen.’

‘Not that keen.’ Nina held up her phone. ‘Wouldn’t be collecting other bloke’s phone numbers if I was. But Piers did say he’d take me up the Oxo Tower, and I do like a bad boy, though I think Piers might be more evil than bad.’

‘What do you mean by “evil”?’ Posy’s voice was anything but neutral now. ‘Because there’s something about him that sends shivers down my spine. Not good shivers, but shivers as in something wicked this way comes.’

‘Well, I’ve been on that one date with him and he spent the entire two hours staring at my boobs, which is entirely understandable, telling me all about the people he’s screwed over in order to close a deal, and badgering me with questions about Bookends. That’s when he wasn’t lunging at me.’ Nina wriggled her shoulders as if she was still trying to dislodge herself from a clinch with Piers. ‘He said that his role model in life is Donald Trump.’

‘You are not to see him again. I don’t care if he wants to take you up the Shard or the Oxo Tower or upstairs at the Burger King on Tottenham Court Road,’ Posy said. ‘He is bad news, Nina. Seriously, if you keep on seeing him, we’re going to have a problem. You could do so much better.’

‘Yes, Mum,’ Nina said, without any of her usual ferocity when her dating preferences were challenged. ‘Anyway, let’s not spoil the mood by talking about Piers. So, Jens seems nice. Like, you have so much in common.’

‘He’s really nice. But the only thing is, maybe he’s a bit too nice. He agreed with everything I said. I wonder if that might get boring after a while. I mean, there’s a reason people say that opposites attract, isn’t there?’

‘He agreed with everything you said?’ Nina whistled. ‘My God, what a creep!’

‘Says the woman who only goes out with creeps,’ Verity reminded her. ‘Because Posy’s right. I’ve only seen that Piers from a distance and he made my flesh crawl. You need to go cold turkey on the creeps.’

‘They’re not creeps, they’re misunderstood.’

Nina was still listing the various ways each of her boyfriends had been misunderstood (‘He didn’t mean to shoplift that bottle of whisky, it fell into his pocket’) when they reached Bookends.

Nina only shut up about the bad boyfriends she’d known and loved when her head hit Posy’s pillow and she gave up talking in favour of snoring gently.

And it wasn’t until the next morning when Posy was curled up in the armchair, swaddled in a blanket and pleading with Sam to make her a cup of tea, that she discovered the five twenty-pound notes she’d forced on Sebastian stuffed down the sofa cushions.