We carried on after the summer break, but back in Aber it didn’t seem so romantic or so real somehow. Shagging on a single bed in the halls of residence, where you could hear everything through the walls, seemed to bring a different world upon us and being in familiar surroundings made me think again about being gay. A couple of weeks into the term I was seeing Tudor and feeling bad about two-timing Krista. Then, on a Wednesday in early November she said she’d missed her period. What did I know about contraception? I’d just assumed she’d sorted it. I behaved like a real shit. I even asked her if she was sure it was mine. We didn’t see one another for ages after the abortion.

On a Saturday in January we bumped into one another in Galloway’s and I persuaded her to come to the Cabin for a coffee. We talked and then walked the prom to kick the bar. She’d started seeing someone. I said I was glad. I also said I was sorry for all the hurt I’d caused her. She said she’d missed being friends with me. I said we could still be friends if she wanted, but it didn’t happen. When we met, in the union refec or the back bar of the Skinners, we’d agree that we should do something together, but we never did.

A good few years after we’d graduated and moved on from Aber I saw her in a restaurant in Manchester. I was with Roger, an architect, the only married man I ever went out with. She was with a handsome, blond man and they looked all intimate, so I decided it would be better not to renew our acquaintance, but she caught my eye as we got up to leave. So I met Phil. They were celebrating their fourth wedding anniversary. We swapped addresses, but I didn’t expect to hear from her. The next Christmas I got the first of her newsy round robins.

After cleaning all day and making a beef casserole ready for when Rhun got home, I lounged in the bath and wondered whether it was even possible for a live stranger to donate a kidney. Setting the table for dinner I stuffed Krista’s letter into the middle of the heap so as not to draw attention to it and rehearsed the lines I might say to Rhun. He laughed, which really put me off my stride, and said that the chances of a cross match were so remote that I should save myself the bother. I said that if the chances were really so remote he wouldn’t mind if I got a leaflet from the transplant centre in Liverpool.

Beryl George, the transplant coordinator, spoke to me via the switchboard.