When thinking about sex, I always fantasized about the same person; in fact it wouldn’t be inaccurate to say I had thought about him at least once every day in the twenty years since we’d broken up. Jason Moore, my first love.

Sometimes, if I was in the right mood, I could drift off and, for a split second, be back in the past. I could remember exactly what he looked like – or rather, had looked like then. The way he had smiled, how he had closed his eyes when he kissed me – I could picture him clearly. For flashing, brief moments, I could feel the same skin-tingling, intoxicating sensation of being with him, and what it was like knowing that he wanted to be with me.

Jason was my university sweetheart. I was head-over-Timberlands for him then, and no one had lived up to him since, no matter how much I had wanted myself to fall in love. And believe me, I had really wanted to love like that again. Over the years, I had tried so hard to find someone to replace Jason. But no one came close. Oscar got warm, but when he told me he didn’t want any more children, I knew I had to move on; I had to take control of my desire to become a mother. So there I was, single and trying to make a baby on my own.

I’d read enough features in women’s magazines to know that nothing hurt as much as the first time you fell in love; I was not stupid – and I was not overemotional. I just thought I would have been over him by now; that the years would have blurred the depth of feeling, and that other people would have filled the void, ideally by being better than him. But the truth was, I hadn’t experienced the kind of madness that came with true love – the utter insanity when you would do anything for five minutes in the company of that person, even if it meant flying to the other side of the world – since Jason.

So when I saw him that Thursday, it was the shock of my life. I was snapped out of my daydream by an Evening Standard vendor pushing a copy of that evening’s paper into my palm. The sun was still high in the sky and I decided to buy myself a cupcake from Lola’s near the Tube station as a reward for tomorrow. Despite a little apprehension – because the appointment had the power to change my life forever – I was in a good mood. I had a strong feeling of hope in my heart, like it was going to be okay.

I was sat on the Tube reading the paper, the red velvet cupcake encased in a little box in a paper bag between my feet, with my beloved cross-body Gucci bag on my lap. At each stop there was the bustle of passengers coming and going, bobbing up and down as they moved in and out of seats around me. I couldn’t explain why I chose that moment, but I looked up from the paper for a second and that’s when I clocked him sitting directly opposite me. I knew that face. I knew it so well. A moment of recognition and then I averted my eyes, looking back down at the printed paper in front of me. My body reacted immediately, suddenly feeling very hot and tight around the chest, my breathing quickened and my heart rate sped up. Was I imagining this? I swallowed, but the thumping in my heart only grew stronger. I glanced up again, fleetingly, to double-check. He was engrossed in his laptop – he had become that guy who worked on his laptop on the Tube. But I’d have recognized his face anywhere: the angular, chiselled features but soft, green eyes. The thick mop of dark brown hair, although it was styled in a sensible neat crop then, rather than the longer, grungy look of 2000. He was still good-looking.