I’d already arranged for John to spend the weekend with his grandparents in Plymouth since I’d been expecting to see Tim that night. I discovered later that Miles had been so sure of himself, so sure of me, that he had asked me out on the Friday night of a weekend when his wife and children were away. We left the Bridge Inn late that evening, my head swirling with beer and whisky, but even so, as we staggered drunkenly into Topsham heading for the Globe Inn, I knew what would happen. Not all of it, not all that was going to happen, because if I had I would have listened to Miles more closely and then walked away from him.

The next morning when I woke, headache pounding, it occurred to me that Miles must already have booked the room. He was in the bathroom, shaving, when I asked him if he had and he said, ‘Yes.’ A flash of anger, mingled with a streak of faint shame, splashed over me, soon to pass. We spent the weekend together, most of it in the hotel room, a few hours walking the banks of the Exe and the Turf, and then Miles went back to his family and I drove to Plymouth to collect John.

Miles and I were equals and that, I suppose, is why we were so drawn to each other. Literally drawn. I would be sitting in my office, the door open, and would look up suddenly to find Miles watching me. We seemed instinctively to know where to find each other in the labyrinthine corridors of the university; at the day’s end we would drift to our cars and, wordlessly, one would follow the other to a pub, to a hotel, to a park. Eventually to Miles’ family home. I remember following his car - a grey, utilitarian Mini with sliding windows and cracked red leather seats — in my bulbous, much-loved Morris Minor, pulling into the drive and sitting in the seat. Miles came to my window and I wound it down.

‘What’s the problem? Aren’t you coming in?’

‘No.’

‘Why not? There’s no one in.’

‘That’s not the point - it’s not right.’

Miles pulled his familiar dark-green corduroy jacket, with its leather, four-quarter buttons, tighter round him, because the day was cold and damp. ‘Don’t be silly.’

Silly? That was a word I would use to describe a child, an infant. ‘Don’t be what?

‘Look, you know and I know what we’re doing. Where we do it is, surely, irrelevant.’

‘Maybe to you,’ I said, and I put the car in reverse and left him, hugging his jacket and blowing on his hands.

The next day he came to my office and apologised. That afternoon I took a man back to the cottage in Noss Mayo for the first time. John had a rugby match after school and wouldn’t be back until late. Opening the familiar door, being followed by Miles, his hand on my back, pushing me towards the stairs, pushing me down on the bed, was one of the most erotic moments of my life. I found I liked to have him there, although I hadn’t expected to. I had expected to feel guilt, to feel invaded, and instead I felt whole, as if the cottage was full, complemented.