I leaned back on the cushioned bench, resting my head against the panelled wall, cursing under my breath. He was only trying to help and I’d snapped at him, but surely he’d have expected it. I was hardly going to be a laugh a minute this weekend.

‘Pint of Dark Anvil,’ he said, placing two glasses on the table. ‘Thought I’d give it a try too.’

‘It’s good.’

He took a sip. ‘It is good. Millie sends her love. Actually, she instructed me to give you a huge hug but maybe later.’

‘Depends on how many of these I’ve had as to whether I let you.’

We sat in silence for a few minutes, sipping our drinks, until Jack cracked. ‘Sorry, bro. I’m crap at this stuff. Millie would have been so much better than me. I still can’t believe Nikki’s gone.’

‘It’s been seven months, thirteen days and…’ I glanced at my watch. ‘Nearly two hours.’

Jack sighed and shook his head, at a loss for words for once.

‘She was my life, Jack. It’s so unfair. We should have grown old together but she never even made it to our wedding day.’

The drinks had been on me that first night together. Who knew surfing was so damn hard? Lying on the board on the sand and manoeuvring to a standing position had seemed easy. Lying on the water and doing the same? Jesus! Nikki had been an amazingly patient teacher but a couple of hours in the sea definitely wasn’t enough to master it. At one point, though, I did manage to ride a wave kneeling and I got why surfers became hooked on it. The adrenaline rush of surging forward towards the beach was like nothing I’d experienced before.

And being with Nikki was like nothing I’d experienced before either. She was so different to Kirsty that I found myself unable to think of a single reason why I’d stayed with Kirsty for so long. Nikki and I had so much in common and I loved making her laugh that loud belly laugh of hers.

It turned out that Nikki was getting over a cheating ex too so we agreed to take things slowly, just as friends, both keen not to jump into a rebound thing. But I couldn’t stop thinking about her. She was a radiographer and I hadn’t spotted her around the hospital before, but suddenly she seemed to be everywhere. I found it harder and harder to do the friends thing when all I wanted to do was pull her into the nearest store cupboard and kiss her like there was no tomorrow.

On my third surfing lesson, a couple of weeks after we’d met, we were the last ones bobbing about on the swell as the final streaks of the most stunning sunset faded into darkness.