Seth did everything right in those first few weeks. He was the personification of charm, but he was such good fun, too, taking me out to parties all around London and introducing me to all his friends. One of them, a girl called Lavender, took me under her wing as soon as we met. She was one of those effortlessly cool girls – you know the ones I mean – all dyed hair, alternative fashion and scary-looking piercings in unexpected places.

She would tell me not to worry about other girls approaching Seth, because she would be there to keep an eye on him, and would report back if anything dodgy happened. There was this one girl, Cece, from his university. She made it pretty bloody clear that she had the hots for him, and I was so jealous of her. Cece was all the things that I wasn’t, you see: skinny, blonde, rich and so confident. I couldn’t work out why a boy like Seth would choose dumpy, lumpy little me over someone like her, but Lavender would laugh at that and tell me how pretty I was, and how Seth was lucky to have me. She very quickly became the person I confided in the most.

I thought that I trusted Seth, too, but looking back now, of course I didn’t. Jealousy and trust are like oil and water – they do not mix – and I was so scared of Seth getting bored of me, or finding someone better, that I would have done anything to keep him interested.

Of course, there were lots of happy moments in those heady first few weeks, too. When Seth walked me back to the hostel at night and kissed me under the streetlights, or when he turned up at the café with flowers, just because he thought I’d like them. At night, I would lie in bed and picture our wedding, right down to the dress and the speeches. I imagined my dad clapping him on the back, and my mother crying because she was so happy. Seth would write the novels he was always talking about and I would keep horses, and we would live happily ever after, back in New Zealand. It was all there in my head, the life I thought I wanted, and the focal point of it all was Seth Cooper.

As well as Tracey and Lavender, there was one other person that I confided in. Remember how I mentioned that Seth came into the café with his professor? Well, one evening he turned up at Sunrise as I was closing down, and he looked so sadly through the window that I let him in and made him a hot chocolate on the house.

At the time, I thought of him as being so much older than me, but actually, he was only in his early thirties. He had all this wild hair that stuck out at all angles, and his glasses were held together by Sellotape. He fitted my idea of a mad English professor perfectly, and I liked him not only because of his friendship with Seth, but also because of how much he made me laugh without really meaning to. The professor always had an anecdote, and usually it consisted of something funny that had happened to him. Once he told me that he’d driven halfway to work with his nosy neighbour’s cat clinging on to the roof of his car, and another time he had Tracey and me in stitches over a story involving his mother-in-law and some out-of-date prawns.

I’m telling you all this so you’ll understand just how much of a shock it was that evening, when he slumped into a chair and started crying in front of me. I had never seen a grown man sobbing before – my dad would certainly never have wept in front of me – and I had no idea how to handle it. I knew that Tracey kept an emergency bottle of brandy under the café sink, so I offered him some of that, and after a while, he started talking.

He told me that his marriage was in trouble, that he and his wife had been arguing non-stop and that she had threatened to leave him. I tried to ask why, as gently as I could, but all he kept saying was that he wasn’t able to give her what she wanted, and that he felt helpless. I didn’t know what to say to comfort him, so I just kept pouring the brandy, but the more he drank, the sadder he seemed to become. To distract him, I started to confide my own worries, explaining how I was struggling to get over all my awful jealousy and trust Seth. He gave me some advice, and it helped, it really did. Lavender said all the right things, but she wasn’t an adult – not really, not compared to the professor anyway. His words meant more to me than hers, and after that first night, the two of us began talking a lot more.

It wasn’t in any way romantic between us – nothing like that at all – but I did start to care about him. He was like a best friend and a big brother rolled into one, and I felt special knowing that I was the one he had chosen to turn to at his time of need. It wasn’t very long before the professor knew more about me and my life than anyone else in London – even Seth.

But, of course, there were things that I didn’t tell him.