We’d only been together for two months when Nick asked me to marry him. We were in bed on a Sunday morning; it was still early and we were sleepy but happy. It was one of those perfect days when the sun fell through the sash windows of his flat, and we had nothing planned except rumbles of a possible Sunday lunch at a country pub and a bank holiday on the other side of another night filled with curiously dark, but incredibly erotic, sex.

I lay on top of him, my arms and legs star-stretched out, my hands finger-laced with his, my feet lying flat against his own.

It must’ve been summer because we’d lost the duvet somewhere along the way and neither of us looked for it. Instead we just stared and stared into each other’s eyes. I stared at those blue eyes and felt amazed that I could have such an intense connection with another person. I’d never experienced anything like it – I just stared, fascinated, enraptured.

‘Lisa,’ he said, his breath moving my hair against my face. I giggled, but his face had changed, become serious.

‘Honey?’ he said trying again. ‘I want to ask you something. I know . . . it’s been no time, I know that . . . but even so, what I’m trying to say is . . .’ In his pause, he looked so vulnerable, so afraid. ‘I want to marry you.’ His tone was serious but his words floated like bubbles. ‘What I’m trying to say is – will you marry me? Lisa, will you be my wife?’

I knew it was crazy to get married so soon, when I didn’t really know him. But I didn’t care. Right then was the happiest moment of my life.

We loved being together and as soon as we were engaged we started looking at flats. But nothing was the perfect family home I’d dreamed of. By the time we walked into the Victorian flat we were to buy, I was seven months pregnant with Jack. We loved it straightaway. ‘Look at the high ceilings!’ I said in a hushed squeal, as we trailed round after the estate agent. We were a couple with vision. We could see past the peeling wallpaper, the dirty carpet, the dated kitchen and tired bathroom. Together, we opened cupboards, looked up the chimneys and angled our heads out of the bay windows, not caring that the estate agent stood in the hall pointedly looking at his watch and saying: ‘If there’s nothing else, I’ve really got to get going.’

We knew we could make it beautiful. It would take dedication, sweat and whatever money we had spare, but we could do it.

‘Put the offer in,’ I whispered in the kitchen, away from the estate agent’s hearing.

‘Now?’ he asked. ‘Before we leave?’

‘We don’t want to miss out. What if it goes?’