When Karl left for Edinburgh, where he would be staying in a grand, romantic hotel that the company was putting him up in (I’d seen it online), we kissed each other goodbye at the door with a knowing smile and a little wave. I asked no questions. That was the deal. Alone in the house, with high-wire nerves, I had emailed Johnny under the pretence of writing an article about journalism. To my surprise, within the hour he’d emailed me back and we’d arranged to meet up in a bar near the LSE off Drury Lane on the Friday. I must have read that email fifty times. It was all so easy. I hadn’t expected everything to happen so quickly and I regretted it. What on earth were Karl and I doing? Wasn’t it enough just to be honest; did we really have to act on it? I texted Ness and she came round after she’d finished working. We drank wine and danced to Fun Boy Three on YouTube. For the next forty-eight hours I could think of nothing else, my imagination galloping off in ghastly Fifty Shades directions. Over the last ten years I had fantasized about bumping into Johnny, especially if I went to Brighton where I knew he now lived. In my fantasy I was cool and wisecracking and irresistible. In reality I would be no such thing. Even the thought of it made me a jabber. I’d lost my appetite. I woke up with my heart fluttering. It was ridiculous.

I’d googled him, of course. I’d seen a recent picture. He hadn’t aged badly: he had a few more wrinkles, a wider girth and a thinner head of hair, as might be expected, but he looked more or less the same. Presumably he’d googled me and seen similar slappings from the hands of time. I found myself staring into Karl’s shaving mirror with fresh eyes. My face used to be a simple affair: two eyes, a nose and a mouth. But now there was too much going on: eye bags, lines on my forehead, lines round my eyes, thin red veins and an albinic moustache which I swore hadn’t been there the previous day. My face had become too busy. It was depressing. But I did what I could: I lotioned and potioned my skin, I waxed and plucked that ’stache, I dyed and curled my lashes, I shaved my legs just in case and even managed to find time to have my bikini line done (by an overenthusiastic beautician, might I add; now my pubis resembled a pig’s trotter, which was certainly not the look I was going for). Don’t get me wrong – I wasn’t going to be showing it but I needed to be prepared for this new voyage aboard the good ship Freedom.