‘Oh, thanks for coming,’ I reply brightly. I’m not quite sure what’s happening between us. I convinced myself halfway through the dinner that my fantasies about me and Dr Jack Prince are ridiculous. He’s too important, too old, too married, too wealthy, and way too out of my league. I’m lucky just to be kind of friends with him. That’s enough, I tell myself. It is definitely enough.

The silence lingers and neither of us moves to break it.

Then all of a sudden, friends isn’t enough.

I reach forward and rest my hand on his cheek, just for a moment. Just to check that he’s there, that I’m there, that we’re real.

‘Katarina …’ he says.

I wait, hardly breathing.

‘I feel such a strong attraction for you. It has made it very difficult at work. This effect you have on me when we’re near each other, on the rounds, in theatre … I felt like I didn’t know how to behave at times, I couldn’t understand where these feelings were coming from, I didn’t want to be …’ He pauses. ‘I can’t help it,’ he tells me simply. ‘I lose myself around you.’

I lose myself around you.

Usually, we’re protected from each other. There are invisible boundaries everywhere: in the operating theatre, on the wards, in the hierarchy of the medical profession. As doctors, we always tell our patients to resist their urges. Stub out that cigarette, don’t eat the slice of mudcake, cork the bottle of wine. Resist temptation.

Until now.

I can’t remember who leans in first, perhaps because we both lean in at the same time.

When his lips meet mine something deep inside me comes to life, something that’s been carefully suppressed for a long time. I push my tongue inside his mouth and he wraps his arms around my waist, his hands running over my body: surgeon’s hands. Our lips together are perfect. I vanish completely into the kiss. He tastes like wine and ash and all things good and bad, and I never want it to end. It’s the kind of kiss that dreams are made of.

When we break apart the magic is still hovering in the air between us. I want to lie next to him, and to see what he feels like after we make love. I want him to touch me gently, with all of the power he exudes in the operating theatre and a tiny bit of the pain. I want him to play with my hair against a pillow and I want to show him how much pleasure we can make together.

Much like a futile last-ditch intervention for someone who is about to die, it’s all too much, and not enough. It never has been, and it never will be.