As the light died early one grim March afternoon, we lay naked on the bed, eating Marmite sandwiches and drinking coffee, listening to the radio droning, and we heard that Lieutenant William Calley had been found guilty of murdering Vietnamese citizens at My Lai. Looking back I see that my affair with Miles was conducted against a backdrop of global violence and perhaps that’s why I burrowed deeper and deeper into him in a way I hadn’t with others, not even with Dai Davies.

Miles was beautiful, intelligent, engaging and sensual; the same attributes, I know, that he thought he saw in me. We loved and were indifferent in equal measure. I had John and he had his wife and children and, at first, it never occurred to us for a moment that it would be otherwise. He didn’t insult me by saying that he no longer loved his wife - he did, and he slept with her, ate with her, took holidays with her; he was, in short, her husband. I spent every moment that I could with John, never compromising our relationship. Even if Miles had a free weekend, if John was at home and wanted to go out for the day — usually snorkelling around the rocks at Crackington Haven or tramping the sands at Rock -1 stayed with John and I never begrudged him a moment.

Miles and I suited each other because we were both predators. We’d sit in bars and I would see his amber and brown eyes flick over to a young blonde woman, or follow a student as she moved around the room. I would sit and watch men as they walked and talked, bayed in their groups, hugging pints of beer close to their chests, covertly glancing at me. Miles and I would smile at each other and leave together; we deserved each other. I knew that he found me utterly desirable, could not stop seeing me, touching me, and the feeling was mutual. Both predators, we had no inhibitions and I never tired of having sex with him. Nor of talking to him and it was this fact - that we revelled in each other’s stolen company, that we were good friends, intellectual equals, as well as lovers — that made what happened even more difficult to bear.

29 November 1999