‘Only 19,’ he said. ‘We knew so little about life then.’

‘I knew what it felt like to be in love though,’ I replied. ‘And I really did love you.’

His phone rang again, but he immediately turned it off.

We both looked at each other in silence for a few seconds. I mean, really looked.

He slid his hand around my neck and pulled me into his chest. I hoped he would stop this line of questioning because it felt so good to be held and I desperately wanted to kiss him. For us to forget about everything and everyone else, just for a moment. He smelt nice, comforting – a faint woody cologne and washing detergent.

‘It’s okay,’ he whispered, his eyes gleaming. ‘Let’s not get into it.’ And he stroked my hair.

After that, the following hour seemed to pass in a flash. Glasses charged, we started to talk about some of the fun times we had had at uni, the freshers’ parties, the time we had drunk so much peach schnapps we couldn’t get out of bed for forty-eight hours, and then we moved on to our work, families and the few mutual friends we were still in touch with – he remembered Katie and was interested to hear what she was up to in Oxfordshire. All the while we stole shy, fleeting glances at each other as we covertly weighed up the passing of time and what had once been between us.

So much had changed, yet so much was exactly the same.

He still had a face that smiled entirely, his eyes as engaged as his mouth, his lips plump and wide, and the little gap between his lower front teeth that used to bug him when we were young made him even more handsome. He laughed easily – the infectious delight he took from life. It wasn’t hard to imagine that many women had fallen under Jason’s spell during the last two decades. I couldn’t help but feel honoured he still remembered me; that I held a special place in his heart.

I found myself fighting an impulse to sink into him, to let him wind an arm around my shoulder again, to pull me close and kiss me. He felt so familiar yet I didn’t really know him at all. But the chemistry was still there, I couldn’t be imagining it. Surely he felt it too?

Jason had just returned from the bar with a bottle of red wine – we had drunk at least a bottle and a half already, in single glasses, and now there was no mistaking it, we were drunk. As he sat down and faced me, I got the feeling he felt the attraction too. There was something familiar between us, but also illicit; a thrill in our behaviour but also a feeling that we were doing nothing wrong. That it was natural and right that we were together right now. It was as if, in that moment, we existed in a parallel world. That’s how I justified the feelings I was having towards a married man, anyway. The wine was slipping down far too easily, and I’d noticed Jason down a large shot at the bar. He seemed intent on getting drunk; I sensed an underlying recklessness to his actions. I wondered if there was more to it; if he was happy in his marriage.