Sophie Jenkins - The Forgotten Guide to Happiness - The unmissable debut, perfect for anyone who loved THE KEEPER OF LOST THINGS

However – what was there to lose? He might even buy me lunch and I’d get a free meal out of it.

‘All right,’ I sighed. ‘I’ll bring my notebook.’

‘Great! Twelve o’clock at the Edinboro Castle,’ he declared. Then he added in an undertone, ‘How did that sound?’

I smiled despite myself. ‘Decisive and masterful,’ I said.

Some people never forget a face. I’m not one of them. I couldn’t remember what Jack Buchanan looked like, other than the general impression of a person who’d just got out of bed. But when I got off the bus in Delancey Street he was leaning against the white gatepost of the Edinboro Castle. He was wearing a lime-green jacket, his dark hair ruffling in the breeze.

‘Hey!’ he said, taking his hands out of his pockets.

‘Yeah, hey!’

‘You came!’ He grinned at me.

I was surprised that he thought I wouldn’t. It wasn’t as if I had anything better to do or any other invitations, but there’s nothing quite as satisfying as exceeding someone’s expectations.

‘How is your new book coming along?’ he asked.

‘Basically … not well. To get creative, you need to be ill or bored.’

‘Is that so?’

‘Andrew Motion drinks Lemsip when he’s writing. It’s to fool his mind into believing he’s got a cold.’ Just behind Jack I could see the menus pinned to the gateposts in gilt frames. I have a lot of faith in a menu in a gilt frame. ‘Are we going in?’

‘Well, what I thought was, we could walk to the Hub Sports Pavilion, have a coffee and then go to the boating lake and hire a boat. I’ll row.’

I fancied a glass of wine and something to eat in the pub, but I had to give him credit for coming up with a plan.

‘Or,’ he said, ‘we could hire a pedalo, but that doesn’t seem the kind of thing a hero would do, right?’

I thought it over as we turned the corner and walked past the flower shop through the scent of lilies. A train rumbled beneath us.

‘True. A hero would have a jet ski.’

He laughed. ‘Yes. I read your book.’

‘You did? I can’t believe you bought it!’

‘Well … I didn’t exactly buy it. My stepmother took it from the library. But it has given me a rough idea of what you’re looking for in a hero.’

The suspense was killing me. ‘So what did you think of it?’ I asked casually.

‘Time-consuming,’ he said. ‘Not the book – I mean, love in general.’

I looked at him curiously. ‘You’ve never been in love, have you?’

‘Me? No. All that uncertainty, does she love me or not, and then the misunderstandings and other complications … I thought you got the title perfectly: Love Crazy – I like the way you identified it as a kind of insanity that makes people behave completely out of character. I’m more of a logical thinker. I like things to be straightforward.’

‘You got all that from my book?’

‘Nah. Mostly from life. My parents broke up when I was young.’

‘Yeah? Mine too.’

‘How old were you?’

‘Eighteen. You?’

‘Eight. It killed my mother.’

Mine, too , I almost said but then I looked up and his face was expressionless, as if he didn’t want his thoughts to show, so I held back my comment in case he meant it literally.

Of course, when I asked him what he thought of the book, what I actually wanted to know was whether he’d enjoyed it. Writers are strangely needy that way. Last year I went to the Radio Four book club and sat next to a woman named Minna Howard, who was also a writer (it was research, in case we were ever asked to do it ourselves), and the highly acclaimed guest author David Mitchell responded to her praise with such warmth and delight that I was convinced he was her ex-lover. Turned out she’d never seen him before in her life. He was just deeply grateful for her kind words.

We crossed at the lights and stepped into bright sunlight at Gloucester Gate. The sky was a pale, frigid blue. Attached to the railings was a plaque showing St Pancras being attacked by pumas. We crossed at the stone grotto drinking fountains where Matilda the bronze milkmaid posed with her bucket and he asked: ‘So, what happened to Marco Ferrari?’

I blushed. Well this was uncomfortable. When I’d written Love Crazy I’d assumed Mark and I would be together forever so I’d never imagined this situation arising – going out with a guy who knew all about my past.

I’ve always been obsessed with telling the truth and, although I see it as a positive character trait, other people don’t necessarily see it as a good thing. But I’ve stuck with it because it’s become my way of rebelling. No one can argue with the truth.

The way I looked at it, this meant that I was also going to have to explain that Mark had dumped me and it was way too soon to disillusion him – I always prefer people to get disillusioned with me in their own good time.

However, the habit of a lifetime is hard to break.

‘We broke up,’ I said, and glanced up at him, blinking – in the sunlight his lime-green jacket was hard on the eyes.

‘I knew it!’ Jack said. ‘So, what happened? Did you get bored with all that adventure and the excitement?’

I liked the way he assumed I’d been the one to end it. ‘We’d always kept our independence; I guess it was an extreme version of that.’

He pressed the button on the crossing. ‘Independence to the point of separation?’ He gave me a look that was both incredulous and empathetic at the same time. ‘And now you’re looking for a new hero to write about.’

I wanted to say something witty and trivial in reply. We crossed the road and while I was working on it, Jack said, ‘So, with the pedalo you really need two to pedal, that’s why I thought we could get a rowing boat and I could row you by myself.’

‘Have you rowed before?’

‘No, but I watch the boat race every year and I think it’s all about the rhythm. Brisk and steady.’

I laughed. There was an endearing quality about him; something normal and nice, and trust me, they weren’t attributes that I ever thought I’d rate in a guy. We walked in step alongside the Zoological Society of London’s railings, keeping a respectable distance away from each other.

Ahead of us was the park. In the golden glow of the autumn sunshine, the grass was bright green, and the trees striped it with muted shadows. A glossy brown boxer dog bounded across our path chasing pigeons and two children raced their brightly coloured scooters towards us with speed and aplomb. Joggers overtook mothers pushing buggies and I thought about Jack’s comment that love was time-consuming. I was just going to ask him about it when his phone started to ring right at that moment.

He took it out of his jacket, stared at the number and frowned. For a moment I thought he wasn’t going to answer it. He let it ring a couple more times and then he sighed.

‘Sorry, Lana, I’d better take this.’

‘Go ahead.’

I did that polite thing of staring at the horse chestnut trees in the distance and pretending not to listen as he said, ‘Hello? Nancy. Slow down – what do you mean, a lot of men? John the police officer?’ He flicked a glance at me. ‘Okay, okay, put him on. Hello? Yes,’ he said irritably, ‘I can hear that she’s fine. No, I’m not worried.’

He turned his back to me as he looked across the park. ‘A sex offender? What’s he done? What do you mean you can’t tell me? Okay. Put Nancy back on. Hi, Nancy, it’s Jack again. Listen, I’m out with a friend at the moment. I’ll call you later.’ His face was set as he turned back to me and tucked his phone away.