We spent the rest of the lunch arguing over names for our children like we’d been together for ever. On his way out, he handed me a leaflet. ‘We’re playing on Friday night at the Pig and Whistle in Deansgate. Please come.’

‘I might.’

He smiled. ‘Playing hard to get, eh?’

‘I don’t even know you.’

‘Michael O’Connor, so now you do – know me, that is.’

‘And I’m Bea Brooks.’

‘Short for Beatrice? As in Rossetti’s wife?’

‘Probably. My parents love the Pre-Raphaelites, as do I.’

‘Brooks? You don’t by any chance have a brother called Matthew, do you?’

‘I do.’

Michael put his hand over his heart. ‘Fated. He plays in our band sometimes.’

‘Oh! So you’re in The Glow Sticks?’

‘I am. See, if we hadn’t met here, we were bound to have met somewhere. It’s fate. Meant to be, like Moonbeam and Star. See you Friday, Bea Brooks.’

And off he went. I did go to the gig, of course I did. He was drop-dead gorgeous and had flirted with me: how could I resist? Matthew warned me against him as soon as he heard, saying that Michael was the sort who would never settle, but it was too late. I was smitten from day one and, miraculously to me, the feeling appeared to be mutual. I fell hopelessly in love. We dated, we spent nights talking about everything from the silly to the sublime, we moved in together or, rather, Michael moved in with me. I was still living at my parents’ house but no one objected to having an Adonis padding around the corridors in his boxer shorts, least of all me. I knew from the beginning that he was a restless soul, a Peter Pan, and I put that down to the artist’s temperament. And I didn’t care that he attracted women like a magnet or that he liked to flirt; he came home to me.