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It houses two floors of the most exquisite kitchen showrooms you could dream of. Modern units, eclectic furnishings, industrial utilities, warm lighting, wooden beams, and dried herbs hanging from the rafters.

I love nothing more than wandering the model kitchens when the store is quiet, imagining them as my kitchen in my beautiful house where I’m baking a cake for friends or cooking up a spicy curry for a quiet evening in with the man of my dreams, who will arrive home with a bottle of crisp white wine and a bunch of flowers and tell me how he’s missed me and couldn’t stop thinking about me. And then his lips would be on mine and the wine would be forgotten as he lifts me onto the oak tops and slides his hands under my shirt as his greedy mouth remembers just how good I taste.

Sydney clears her throat.

“It’s a great day out,” I tell her quickly as I shove my imaginary husband back in the pantry where he resides. “If you like looking at kitchens. And we have free tea, coffee, and biscuits. No scones, though.”

I eye the scone in my hand. If Kitchen City did start handing out free scones, I’d be on a written warning for eating on the job, so maybe it’s a good thing we only have shortbread and ginger nuts.

“I’ll certainly drop by if we need a new kitchen.” Sydney smiles, and I imagine her and Drew perusing the kitchens, picking out handles, discussing the finish of the doors and cupboard capacity, and my heart aches.

She licks jam from her finger, and I know what question is coming next.

“And what about your love life? Is there a guy on the scene?”

Before I arrived, I promised myself I wouldn’t lie to Sydney. She’s my oldest friend. But the missing twenty-one years are eating away at me. She has a house and a career in marketing, and now she has Drew.

I don’t begrudge her any of this; I’m happy for her. But I can’t ignore the pang of jealousy that I’m not even sure is jealousy.

What is this feeling in my gut? That I’ve let her down? Let myself down? Embarrassment at still being single and living alone at the grand age of thirty-six?

She’s staring at me, her eyes hopeful, her smile so warm, and I know she wants me to tell her something good. She wants to feel like I do, knowing she’s settled after all these years. And before I can stop myself, the words are out.

“There’s a guy I’ve been seeing.”

“Of course there is.” And even though the comment is laced with humour, there’s excitement in her eyes, and her smile lights her face. It breaks me because, when we were growing up, there was never not a guy.

There was Isaac Young, who arrived halfway through year eight of high school, who I declared my undying love for behind the science blocks, and he just laughed in my face. Then there was Will Gains, who I was absolutely going to marry, but he wasn’t ready to settle down at the ripe age of fourteen. And let’s not forget Troy Burns, who I spent many weeks dating, but then he caught me practicing my Alice Burns signature on the back of my English book, and he quickly ended things.

“Where did you meet?” Sydney asks, interrupting my little trip down lovers’ lane. “How long have you been with him, and what crazy stunt did you pull that got you two together?”

Oh God, I’m such a bad person.

This is probably the reason why I’m still single, as Cupid has decided I’m not worthy of finding happiness.

“I hate to burst your bubble, but it was all quite ordinary,” I tell her while battening down the hatches on my wild imagination. Telling her we met in Vegas, where I pretended to be a croupier as he kept betting at my table just so he could look at me, isn’t the way to go.

I need to keep it simple. Believable.

“We met at work. He’s one of the designers. He hasn’t been with us long.” I feed Sydney these small lines like I’m putting change into a slot machine, hoping they’ll be enough, but I can tell by the way she’s leaning over the table and clutching at her teacup that she wants more. And my overactive brain is happy to oblige, as it’s already constructing the scene.

“We were in the Bronx kitchen, which is one of my favourites. He had an iPad in his hand and was looking closely at one of the wall cabinets. I made some joke about him coming out of his little office for some air, and he said he was pretending to check a detail on a design he was overseeing, and I said, ‘Pretending?’ and he replied that it was just an excuse to come over and talk to me.”

Sydney’s smile is so wide, I’m worried about her cheeks exploding. “That’s so cute and absolutely something you would do.”

“I know, right?”

“Seems like you were meant to be,” she says.

“Yeah, maybe.”

Sydney must pick up on the dip in my voice, as she says, “Maybe?”

“It’s early days. We’ve only been on a couple of dates, and I’m trying not to get my hopes up.” Or anything up, as none of this is real. I am a bad person.

“Well, if your meeting is anything to go by, I think you’ve finally met your Romeo, and I can’t wait to meet him,” Sydney says, and I’m caught between the guilt of this made-up man and the fear of her last two words.

“Meet him?” The cup slips from my fingers and lands with a clatter on the saucer.