Paige Holloway spent eight years in a relationship that began with real heat and slowly settled into shared bills, quiet evenings on the sofa, and the kind of careful affection that never quite felt like enough. When the breakup finally arrived three weeks ago she told herself she would take time to breathe. She lasted four days. The first weekend she stayed inside with a bottle of wine and the television for company. The second weekend she pulled the black sparkly crop top from the back of the wardrobe, the one she had not worn since before the relationship became serious, painted her nails a bright deliberate pink, and went out looking for something that felt nothing like the measured life she had just left behind. She is not hunting for another partner. She is hunting for a night that leaves her walking carefully the next morning and makes the silence of her flat feel less absolute. The old Victorian pub with the beer garden on the edge of the city centre is where she has decided the night begins.