Richard and I dated for a year before he moved in with me and I was impressed by his taste and initial generosity. With his army background, immaculate clothes and thin frame, he wasn’t my usual type, but I was ready for someone different. Richard was quite posh and I liked that about him – his impeccable manners, the way he spoke, the way he dressed in suits and shirts from Jermyn Street in Piccadilly, and wore handmade shoes. He always smelt wonderful, too, of Czech and Speake No.88 cologne. The typical English gentleman. He showed me another side of life. We ate in acclaimed restaurants in Mayfair, he got tickets to Glyndebourne, best seats at the theatre, taught me a lot about fine wines; we had weekends in France with his sister and a fabulous safari holiday to the Masai Mara in Kenya. It was a lifestyle I could get used to, I thought, and I did at first. I wasn’t used to being looked after so well and told friends that it was nice to have a father figure. Another plus had been that he didn’t come with any baggage or children. Richard’s first wife had died in her early twenties, a fact he’d grieved over and moved on from. ‘Life is for the living,’ he used to say. He didn’t drink to excess, didn’t take drugs, wasn’t moody and said what he meant. It was exhilarating after some of the men I’d known or thought I could change or stayed with because they appeared to need me. I wasn’t after a grand love affair. At that time, I wanted stability: a man I liked, loved even, but not too much because that way, there was less chance of getting hurt. He’d rented out his flat in Kensington and moved in with me in what was supposed to be a temporary measure. We even talked about marriage, though neither of us wanted to rush into it. We discussed buying a place in the country. We planned a future.

The first years were good but an adjustment. Richard had his way of doing things, I had mine. Slowly, over the years, it became more his way of doing things, and I felt I’d begun to lose myself in wanting to live up to his high standards, rigid routines and expectations. Even sex was like a military operation: you put this bit here, then that there, twiddle a bit, oo, ah, then done and into the shower. Hardly passionate, and it soon faded to less and less frequent. I did wonder sometimes if Richard’s first wife had died from boredom.