Daff came back from New York in February 2015. Obviously, I didn’t propose to her straight away; we were still technically on a break, so immediately popping the question would have seemed at best optimistic and at worst utterly insane. All I told her was that I wanted to try again. To make it work between us. Luckily, she agreed – and for those next few months, it did work. We had fun again. I started pursuing boring but lucrative temp work as a copywriter, and gradually I pushed what had happened in Paris into a corner of my mind so remote that it only emerged very occasionally, creeping out in the middle of the night to remind me what might have been.

I finally proposed in summer 2015, during a holiday in Greece, and we were married a year later, on August 18th 2016, at Islington Town Hall. Nothing very fancy: Daff didn’t want some massive posh do, and neither did I. We just wanted our families and our best mates and a fun, memorable day. I was nervous, obviously, but only about the practical things: speeches and seating plans and whether Harv’s DJ set would contain anything at all for the elderly relatives to dance to (it very much didn’t). I certainly wasn’t nervous about the bigger, existential concerns I’d always imagined would rear their heads on my wedding day: all the scary is-this-really-what-I-want-type questions. As Daff walked up the aisle towards me, beaming from ear to ear, I knew for certain that this was exactly what I wanted.

I remember how happy Mum looked, too. She didn’t stop smiling all day – laughing and joking with friends of mine she hadn’t seen for years. At the end of the night, once Harv’s drum ’n’ bass onslaught was over, we danced together tipsily to one of her favourite songs – an old doo-wop track called ‘Life Could Be a Dream’ – and when it finished, she clasped me by the shoulders and told me, ‘I’m so proud of you, love.’ The memory bites so hard that I have to physically shake my head to remove it. I can’t let myself break down before I even get into the church.

We’re nearly there now: the car is purring slowly down the high street. Every single shop window is screaming with Christmas decorations: manic grinning elves and jolly potbellied Santas. I remember noticing this stuff first time around, too, and thinking how jarring it all seemed. It just didn’t make any sense to be surrounded by brightness and festivity on such a miserable, desperate day.

Finally, the car slows and comes to a stop. Up front, Simon takes a deep breath and meets my eyes in the rear-view mirror.

‘Here we are then,’ he says.