Candida laughed. ‘Oh, and before I forget, better let your mum think we’ve broken up, too. Daddy still has to go back to St George’s for his follow-up appointment, so Mummy might bump into your mum there, like they did before.’ She paused, and said huskily down the line, ‘This is quite sexy, isn’t it? Forbidden lovers meeting in secret.’

‘You have a funny idea of sexy,’ Sharif said. ‘And this is the funniest break-up I’ve ever had.’

’Funny ha ha or funny peculiar?’ asked Candida.

’Funny peculiar,’ said Sharif.

The Romantic Memories of Sharif Khan

IHAVE ALWAYS believed that I wasn’t really alive until I first heard music. What I didn’t know before, and I only realize now, was that I had never really heard music until the day I met Candida. She put a song in my heart from the moment I saw her, a relentless, haunting melody that wouldn’t go away, with an underlying beat that would drum heavily in my chest whenever she wasn’t there, just waiting for her to return.

We arranged to meet one weekend by the seaside, and I waited for her at the station, sitting on a bench, lighting cigarette after cigarette. I watched as trains came in and carriages emptied, and I realized that I wasn’t angry with her for being late. Much worse than that, I was frightened. I was frightened that she might not have been able to get away, and that I might not see her at all. When she finally arrived, having decided to drive down rather than take the train, she kissed me warmly and complained about the traffic. But I didn’t care about the traffic; all I could say was that I had missed her, because it was true.

She drove us to a curving beach lined with enormous chalk cliffs. There were a couple of families at the entrance to the beach, but once we strolled around the cliffs, it was utterly deserted, nothing but the waves, the flint scattered on the sand, and us. Candida collected chalk that had fallen from the cliffs. She took a piece and asked me to pose for her, while she drew my portrait on the side of a flat, grey rock that rested under the tide line. Then she drew her own portrait next to mine. We sat back on our blanket and watched the sea come in, and the foaming waves dissolve our chalked images as the salt water licked over the rock. ‘We’re mer-people now,’ said Candida. ‘We’ve turned into sea foam and become immortal.’

We held hands and walked down the empty beach. For the first time, I really understood what my parents must have felt to have lost love, as to have found it was so precious that I could not bear to ever let it go. My heart had been collected like chalk from the beach.