Evie moved back to Fernfield, married a lovely man called Darren, successfully set up her own home-based accountancy business and sadly unsuccessfully tried to start a family. One devastating miscarriage and countless tests on both of them had taken their toll on the relationship and last time Evie phoned she admitted that she was beginning to think that they’d fallen out of love with each other. I reassured her that this would be a temporary blip but it tore me apart to see them both suffering; they made such a lovely couple.

It was twelve years since Mum died and Dad had stayed single all this time. He eschewed all advances from members of the opposite sex, though as his tan deepened and his body grew leaner from all his physical work, there were plenty of offers. Now in his early sixties, he decided last month to retire properly, sell the business to his partner, rent his house out and travel around Europe for a year on his own.

I cried when I heard the news. Not because I didn’t want him to go, but because this adventure had always been their plan for retirement: Mum and Dad’s, together. I was both proud of him for going ahead by himself and heartbroken that he had to.

As for me, boyfriends had drifted in and out of my life, mostly out; they were all, without exception, pleasant enough. I even lived with the last one before Harvey for a couple of months. But none of them made my skin tingle or my heart leap when their name flashed up on my phone screen. None of them made my stomach fizz when they turned up at my door to collect me for an evening out. None of them ever called me ‘blossom’. Until I met Harvey.

From the moment our flirting graduated from online chat to meeting in real life, Harvey charmed me. He charmed us all, actually. Dad thought he was just the type of young man to make me push my boundaries, Evie thought he was sexy as hell, and even Darren thought he was a top man and took him for the odd pint at the pub. When Harvey called me ‘blossom’ on our fifth date and brought me flowers, it felt like the sign I’d been looking for; maybe I’d finally met ‘the one’.

A year down the line I still loved him, but the fairy-tale romance I’d signed up for had evaporated somewhere along the M1 between Fernfield and Tottenham. And I wasn’t sure what to do about it.