I nodded and we both dragged thoughtfully and frightfully maturely on our cigarettes. Golly, I was in the know. And I wouldn't tell a soul. Not even Shona. That lasted until Tuesday.

Suddenly Belinda put her head around the French windows. "Oh, there you are, Hugo. The Maxwell-Clarks are going, would you come and say goodbye?"

Hugo muttered something as he stubbed his cigarette out on the York stone, but he dutifully got to his feet and went in. As he passed his mother, who was holding the door open for him, she gave me a thin, frosty smile. I knew exactly what it meant. Don't even think about it. The door shut firmly after her. I finished my cigarette and, after a bit, went inside too.

Obviously, the subterfuge appealed to both of us. Hugo got the vibe, too. We'd yet to kiss, but we managed that at the end of the Christmas holidays, at some terrible Pony Club dance at which neither of us would normally be seen dead. Then we managed much more at my house, when Mum went to visit her sister in Devon.

The logistics of a long-distance relationship also appealed: perhaps there was a mutual desire to tick that box without too much pressure. He was away at school and could claim a girlfriend, as I could claim a boyfriend at my all-girls high school in Truro. We telephoned regularly and chatted for hours, but exams were upon us and we rarely met. He went somewhere worthy for the first part of his gap year, six months in India building an orphanage — which he told me he was convinced was knocked down when he left for the next batch of wealthy gappies to rebuild — and after I'd worked in a local restaurant, I went Interrailing with Shona, then helped at my old school in the art department. By now Hugo was training to be a ski instructor in Verbier with all the right sort of girls. Oh, Belinda was on it. Somehow, though, we both kept the faith, and I have to say, I never really doubted him. This was in the pre-Facebook days, before I could torment myself with shots of him being drunk and outrageous and draped in silky blondes but, if anything, he was more territorial than me, and would ring to see how Mr Parker was shaping up.