She had spoken endlessly about her first husband and the break-up of their marriage. Gerald listened carefully as she recounted stories about the times Mike had been drunk and difficult to live with. Gerald had felt such pity for her. She didn’t deserve the treatment she had received, and he for one knew he would never treat any woman like that.

Their first date lasted a little over an hour, and Gerald had left knowing that Toni was the woman for him – even if he wasn’t sure she felt quite the same.

Their meetings continued, and things progressed at a speed he had not been prepared for. She was a woman with a keen sex drive – for which Gerald was extremely grateful. He’d not had many girlfriends and did not share the experience of his new companion, but he was certainly a very willing pupil.

Gerald had always been a mortgage advisor. He worked at a mortgage brokers in Teversham – a slightly rundown village that had been swallowed by Cambridge many years ago. His father had worked as a broker before him and Gerald had never had any expectations that he would do anything different. The Mortgage Solution Centre was on a quiet industrial road, behind Cambridge Airport. For most people, it would have been a depressing place to work, but Gerald never seemed to notice.

At the time, Toni was working as a receptionist at the DW Fitness First gym, located in the Beehive Centre, an industrial estate just off Newmarket Road. She was older than the other people on the desk, and clearly hated the job, but following the collapse of her marriage, she had to do something to put a roof over her head. They had been renting a house, but Toni could not afford to keep it on after Mike had moved out. To Gerald’s horror, he discovered she was living in a bedsit in Trumpington, a residential area on the southern outskirts of the city.

The bedsit was in a building that looked more like a concentration camp than a block of flats, and the place itself was riddled with damp, which made it smell of mould and used to make Gerald sneeze. He felt dirty when they stayed there, and it didn’t take him long to invite her to live with him. Much to his surprise she had jumped at the opportunity. Within twelve hours of their engagement she had quit her job. He felt like a man who had just won the lottery.

When they were together in public the couple would receive many looks. Gerald told himself it was because everyone was so enraptured by her beauty, but in reality, they made an odd pair. The age gap, as well as their height difference, made the couple stick out like a sore thumb, but Gerald was blind to strangers’ sniggers: he only had eyes for Toni.