I’m in the park. The sun’s hot on the back of my neck. My hairline prickles with sweat. I can see him – Dan – on the bench. I breathe in as I start to walk towards him. He doesn’t look at me, but I know that he’ll be happy when he sees me; joy is bubbling up inside me. I call out to him and he turns and smiles. I think. I can’t quite see his face because the sun’s in my eyes.

I’m walking, but I’m not getting any closer. But I’m not worried. I know he’ll be there waiting for me whenever I get there. And then I wake up.

---

I’m re-alphabetising the cookery section when I hear a ping from my phone behind the counter and I can’t get across the shop quickly enough.

‘You’re not meant to leave your phone on the till,’ Henry calls from the stockroom. It’s been super quiet so far this morning, so we’ve just been listening to the radio – we like to start the day competing over PopMaster on Radio 2 – and tidying up.

‘I know,’ I call as I grab my mobile. I’d tucked it behind the pen holder so it wasn’t out on display or anything. Henry’s paranoid since one of the Saturday staff had her phone nicked by a customer and officially we’re not supposed to have our phones with us at all – they’re meant to be switched off and in our bags or coats in the pathetic excuse for a staff room, but no one takes any notice of that particular rule.

‘Shit,’ I say when I see I’ve got a text from a number I don’t recognise. And then I notice the time is 11.11 a.m. Freya told me about a girlfriend who used to make a wish at 11.11 and even though Freya thought it was hilarious, I’ve done it ever since. I close my eyes and whisper ‘Please let it be him’ under my breath before swiping the text open.

Hey. This is Dan. From the park. Hope u remember. Want to get a coffee?

Ken Bruce is playing ‘Get Lucky’ and I close my eyes and dance a bit. He actually texted. I knew he would – he had to, because of the dream – but he really, really did. When I open my eyes again, a customer is standing in front of me and I shriek. ‘Sorry!’

The customer – a young woman wearing a blue crocheted beanie – grins at me. ‘That’s OK.’

‘I just got some good news…’ I say, gesturing vaguely at my phone, before shoving it back behind the pens. ‘Can I help?’

‘I’m looking for a book for my nephew,’ she says. ‘He’s seven.’

I take her over to the kids’ section and show her a few books and only after she’s bought a Roald Dahl gift set and left do I take my phone back out again.

Hi, I type. And then I stare at the screen.

‘Tea?’ Henry calls out from the stockroom.

‘Please.’

I’m still staring at my phone when Henry brings my tea. I’ve typed and deleted a selection of responses, all of them rubbish or embarrassing or both.

‘What’s up?’

I glance at him and back down at my screen. ‘I, um, met someone. Yesterday.’

‘Yeah?’

I put my phone on the counter. The text box says Of course… but that’s all.

‘You know my dream?’ I say, pulling the stand with the gift cards towards me and taking out a handful so I can sort them into matching pictures. ‘The, um, recurring one?’

‘The guy in the park,’ Henry says. ‘I am familiar, yes.’

I nod. I remember the first time I told Henry about it. I hadn’t been working or living with him for long, but we were talking about dreams and it just came out. And he had said, ‘You can’t possibly believe you’re really going to meet him?’

‘I met him,’ I say now. ‘Yesterday.’

I carry on staring at the cards, even though they actually didn’t need sorting at all. I’m not sure anyone’s even bought one since the last time I sorted them.

‘Where?’ Henry says.

I put the card holder back. I can’t even fake tidying it any longer. I flick the till open to check if we need a new receipt roll but that’s fine too. Bugger.

‘Yesterday. In the park. When I went out for milk.’

‘Right,’ Henry says. ‘OK. And… how did you know it was him?’

‘Because I just knew. I’ve been having that dream for ten years. I saw him there and… of course I knew it was him.’

‘And you talked to him?’

I pick up my tea and blow over the surface, watching it ripple. ‘Yes. And I asked him if he wanted to get coffee sometime. And he just texted me.’

‘Wow,’ Henry says.

I glance at him. He’s got a little frown line between his eyebrows that he gets when he’s confused.

‘I know. But now I don’t know how to reply.’ I gesture at my phone.

‘Well what did he say?’

‘Hey-this-is-Dan-from-the-park-hope-you-remember-want-to-get-a-coffee,’ I say without even looking.

‘Right,’ Henry says. ‘So how about, “Of course I remember you. I’m free after five today. You?’’’

‘Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. But isn’t that a bit… I mean, should I let him know that I’m free today? Don’t I want him to think that I’m, you know, busy and important and in demand?’

‘Lie?’ Henry says, smiling slyly. ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure I buy into all that playing games stuff. If you like him and you want to go out with him, why not just tell him that?’

‘Because it might scare him away.’

‘And if it does scare him away then he’s not the right guy for you anyway, right?’

‘Maybe,’ I say, sliding my phone towards me with one finger. ‘I just… I know we’re going to be together, we’re meant to be together. So I don’t want to do anything to jeopardise that.’

‘Or,’ Henry says. ‘If you are meant to be together, there’s nothing you can do that will jeopardise it, so you might as well be yourself.’

‘Ugh,’ I mutter. ‘That’s the last thing I want to be.’

Shaking his head, Henry picks up a box of books from the new delivery and starts sorting through them, separating out the different genres and holding up the occasional romance he knows I’ll want to read.

I type in exactly what Henry suggested, but I still don’t send it. Instead, I stare at it until my eyes water.

‘So you really think he’s your dream man then?’ Henry says a few minutes later, without looking up.

‘Literally,’ I say. ‘Yes.’

‘But I mean… just because you dreamt about him, doesn’t mean he’s right for you, does it? Maybe he’s a Tory. Or he goes dogfighting at the weekend. Or he’s a member of a water sports forum.’

I start to ask what’s wrong with water sports – I’m picturing myself on the back of Dan’s jet ski, zipping across the ocean – but then I realise and I blush. I glance at Henry and notice he’s blushing too. Serves him right.

‘Maybe,’ I say. ‘But I need to know. And I don’t know why I would have had the dream if I wasn’t at least supposed to get to know him.’

‘You know what I dreamt last night?’ Henry says. ‘I dreamt I was in the bath and it fell through to the living room and when the plumber came out to fix it, it was Piers Morgan. Sometimes dreams are just dreams.’

I frown. ‘I think that one means you’re feeling insecure. And the Piers Morgan bit means you have issues with authority. Probably something unresolved with your father.’

---

I tell myself I won’t send the text until I’ve served at least five customers, but when it gets to noon and I’ve still only served two – and one of those was looking for directions to the Tube – I give in and hit send. And then I have to sit down for five minutes, taking deep breaths.

I leave my phone behind while I walk up to the Indian deli on the corner and get two battered aubergine slices for my lunch and then keep walking up to the park. Force of habit. I sit on the bench where I met Dan and eat the first of the aubergine slices, the oil running down my hands, the spices making my tongue tingle. I save the other one for Henry. He always pretends they’re disgusting, but snarfs one every time I buy them.

Henry gave me my first interview when I moved down to London. The manager, Julia, was supposed to do it, but she’d got held up on the Tube somewhere and, after keeping me waiting for forty-five minutes, phoned and told Henry to do it. He’d never interviewed anyone before and I think he was almost as nervous as me. He blushed the entire time and fiddled with one of his shirt buttons so much that it came off. He gave me the job there and then (to spite Julia, he told me once we knew each other better) and then, after I’d worked here a few weeks, he offered me a room in the shared house he lived in.

I’d been living in a bedsit in Acton and I hated it. The landlord there basically wanted the money from renting out a room without ever having to accept that he had a stranger living in his house. So I could cook in his kitchen, but only between 6.30 p.m. and 7.15 p.m. (and I couldn’t leave any dishes so that included washing-up time too). I sometimes didn’t get home until almost seven and by the time Henry took pity on me, I’d had Marmite on toast for dinner five nights running.

Henry’s house was so much nicer – SO much nicer – that I almost cried when he showed me around. Not only was it just a few minutes’ walk from the shop, there were no scary rules about when you could cook (or what you could cook – my old landlord had a fish ban). The only available room was pretty small – there was, is, only just room for my queen bed, a small wardrobe and a chest of drawers; I can’t even have a bedside table ’cos the door would hit it – but I accepted it immediately. Henry borrowed a car, drove with me down to Acton and moved me out before my old landlord was even home from work.

---

When I get back to work, Dan’s replied.

Do you know the coffee shop by the station? How about there at 5.15?