‘With me?’ he said. ‘With Phil Jarman? Who built his own business from nothing, who bench-presses a hundred and forty-five kilos, who plenty of women still think is a better deal than some doctor or lawyer? Or egghead?’

He threw a combination and I attacked back. I thought there was a high probability that I could take him down, but I needed to continue the conversation.

‘It’s none of your business but I was on the school council, coached the senior football team –’

‘Obviously these achievements were insufficient,’ I said. ‘Perhaps Rosie requires something in addition to personal excellence.’ In a moment of clarity, I realised what that something might be in my own case. Was all my work in self-improvement in vain? Was I going to end up like Phil, trying to win Rosie’s love but regarded with contempt?

Fighting and contemplation are not compatible. Phil’s punch took me in the solar plexus. I managed to step back and reduce the force, but went down. Phil stood over me, angry.

‘Maybe one day she’ll know everything. Maybe that’ll help, maybe it won’t.’ He shook his head hard, as though he was the one who had taken a punch. ‘Did I ever call myself her stepfather? Ask her that. I’ve got no other children, no wife. I did all the things – I read to her, got up in the night, took her horseriding. After her mother was gone, I couldn’t do a thing right.’

I sat up and shouted. I was angry too. ‘You failed to take her to Disneyland. You lied to her.’

I scissored his legs, bringing him down. He didn’t fall competently, and hit the floor hard. We struggled and I pinned him. His nose was bleeding badly and there was blood all over my singlet.

‘Disneyland!’ said Phil. ‘She was ten!’

‘She told everyone at school. It’s still a major problem.’

He tried to break free, but I managed to hold him, despite the impediment of the boxing gloves.

‘You want to know when I told her I’d take her to Disneyland? One time. Once. You know when? At her mother’s funeral. I was in a wheelchair. I was in rehab for eight months.’

It was a very reasonable explanation. I wished Rosie had provided this background information prior to me holding her stepfather’s head on the floor with blood pouring from his nose. I explained to Phil that at my sister’s funeral I made an irrational promise to donate to a hospice when the money would have been better applied to research. He seemed to understand.

‘I bought her a jewellery box. She’d been on her mother’s case forever to buy it. I thought she’d forgotten about Disneyland when I came out of rehab.’

‘Predicting the impact of actions on other people is difficult.’

‘Amen to that,’ said Phil. ‘Can we get up?’

His nose was still bleeding and was probably broken, so it was a reasonable request. But I was not prepared to let him go yet.

‘Not until we solve the problem.’

It had been a very full day but the most critical task was still ahead. I examined myself in the mirror. The new glasses, vastly lighter, and the revised hair shape made a bigger difference than the clothes.

I put the important envelope in my jacket pocket and the small box in my trouser pocket. As I phoned for a taxi, I looked at my whiteboard. The schedule, now written in erasable marker, was a sea of red writing – my code for the Rosie Project. I told myself that the changes it had produced were worthwhile, even if tonight I failed to achieve the final objective.

33

The taxi arrived and we made an intermediate stop at the flower shop. I had not been inside this shop – or indeed purchased flowers at all – since I’d stopped visiting Daphne. Daphne for Daphne; obviously the appropriate choice for this evening was roses. The vendor recognised me and I informed her of Daphne’s death. After I purchased a dozen long-stemmed red roses, consistent with standard romantic behaviour, she snipped a small quantity of daphne and inserted it in the buttonhole of my jacket. The smell brought back memories of Daphne. I wished she was alive to meet Rosie.

I tried to phone Rosie as the taxi approached her apartment building, but there was no answer. She was not outside when we arrived, and most of the bell buttons did not have names beside them. There was a risk that she had chosen not to accept my invitation.

It was cold and I was shaking. I waited a full ten minutes, then called again. There was still no answer and I was about to instruct the driver to leave when she came running out. I reminded myself that it was I who had changed, not Rosie – I should have expected her to be late. She was wearing the black dress that had stunned me on the night of the Jacket Incident. I gave her the roses. I read her expression as surprised.

Then she looked at me.

‘You look different … really different … again,’ she said. ‘What happened?’

‘I decided to reform myself.’ I liked the sound of the word: ‘re-form’. We got in the taxi, Rosie still holding the roses, and travelled the short distance to the restaurant in silence. I was looking for information about her attitude towards me, and thought it best to let her speak first. In fact she didn’t say anything until she noticed that the taxi was stopping outside Le Gavroche – the scene of the Jacket Incident.

‘Don, is this a joke?’

I paid the driver, exited the taxi and opened Rosie’s door. She stepped out but was reluctant to proceed, clutching the roses to her chest with both hands. I put one hand behind her and guided her towards the door, where the maître d’ whom we had encountered on our previous visit was standing in his uniform. Jacket Man.