I remember when I met Jack’s dad. I hadn’t long trained as a nurse when I attended a blue-light evening for nurses, firemen and police. Nick had come in with a woman who he introduced as his boss, a rather thin blonde who I thought was interested in him, but he said he didn’t mix work with pleasure – ‘too messy’. Besides, she had a tinny, high-pitched laugh that didn’t sound authentic.

He, on the other hand, was so very bloody authentic. He wore his dark blonde hair swept back, but when a wavy lock broke loose I thought he looked like James Dean.

He wore trousers that showed his muscly legs and shirts with short sleeves that showed off his blue Celtic tattoos. He wasn’t particularly tall but he was good-looking in that square-jawed way that I’m just a sucker for. And when he spoke, boy, he could just talk anyone’s knickers off. It might’ve been the words he used; it might’ve been the intonation, I don’t know because I could never put my finger on it, but he was very sexy. And when he looked at me, I was glad he wasn’t interested in Too Messy.

As we danced, he told me he was a police constable who had visions of becoming a detective. The music was too loud to talk properly, so we left to go to a nearby pub, where we sat in a dark corner, our hope big, eyes bright and conversation small.

Eventually, we left and walked to the bus stop. We behaved ourselves, released from the pub into the night, but we felt aware, so aware, of the possibilities. It was as if the electric ions that buzz before a storm were alive for us, pensive but poised. But if he felt it too, we didn’t speak about it. Instead we talked in quiet voices, walked orderly as if to deny the huge amount of wine we’d drunk and the dark eyes we’d been making at each other all night.

We almost made it.

With only ten metres to the bus stop, I thought that it was over. I’d already started to think about how to say goodbye. I started to rehearse lines that suggested I didn’t mind too much we hadn’t made it to the next base. My cheeks started to flame and I felt both desperate and embarrassed that I’d read it all wrong. The pub had seemed a womb of possibility; the cold night the steriliser.

Then in a snap, it changed.

In one moment he’d moved me back into the shadows and kissed me lightly against someone’s garden wall. It was that moment that changed the direction of my life.

At some point I must’ve drawn breath, but it wasn’t for the longest of moments. The intensity of that kiss, mirrored the intensitity of our relationship.