It was just another ordinary day, really, although Isobel decided to have this one all to herself. If she had been clear in her thinking, she would have agreed that every day was a day to herself since he had left her and taken Snowy with him. How cruel could one man be?

Snowy had been their – her! - adorable Bichon Frise. But even if he had not taken Snowy, she remembered that Snowy didn’t speak and, sometimes, Isobel craved the company of someone who did.

So she called Maria. They agreed to meet in Caffe Nero in Jubilee Place. After all, there was no point in having a day to yourself if you couldn’t share the finer points of it later, with a friend. And Maria just loved a hot gossip. It would be a fun day, after all.

Isobel dressed. She loved that retro look and had recently invested in a pair of knee high black leather boots. She had been told that, when she wore them, she looked sensational. Yes, with the boots and the Ray Bans she knew she would look sensational today.

The weather was gorgeous – blue sky, marshmallow clouds, no wind – but it didn’t matter. She was off to Canary Wharf, London’s (as yet unacknowledged) third city. She loved shopping there. Gigantic glass towers housed two very pleasant shopping centres. She was going to make those till bells ring today.

A few hours later she was laden with designer shopping bags. It was too early to meet Maria but she needed some sustenance to keep her going. She thought she’d make her way to Carluccio’s. “It” happened as she turned the corner by the HSBC bank. A young man walked, full-force, straight into her. He knocked her, her glasses and her shopping across the floor. Still dazed and in shock, she stared into the face of ‘the one’.

‘The one’ was full of remorse. He helped her – “every so gently”, she was to tell Maria later – to her feet. He gathered her belongings and guided her towards Carluccio’s. He insisted he would buy her something – anything, perhaps their best hot chocolate? - as that would aid her recovery.

Isobel definitely desired hot chocolate. And anything else that would give her more time with ‘the one’, so she agreed. They drank hot chocolate whilst staring into the depths of each other’s soul. Then he found her retrieved glasses, and passed them to her. She placed them on the end of her delicate, retrousse nose.

“And that was what did it”, she confided in Maria. “When I put my glasses back on, I could see that, however deep his soul, he was not ‘the one’ after all. He was simply Ron Davies from Sales.”