‘He knew you were with me,’ Oliver continued, ‘when we went to the rugby club but Mitch always wanted what he couldn’t have. Felicity was married with a couple of kids but that didn’t stop him. He knew she was safe. What I mean is that she wasn’t expecting anything from him other than a good time; she was unlikely to leave her husband for a student.’

Felicity. She was the third writer of love letters in the file stuffed at the back of the wardrobe.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, but Oliver assured me it was all Mitch’s fault.

‘He was blinded by your beauty.’ Oliver smiled and laid his hands on top of mine. ‘But he’ll break your heart, believe me.’

Torn between the knowledge that Oliver was a bit in love with me himself and might be trying to steer my ship away from his best friend and the fact that he might be telling the truth, I batted back a few rhetorical questions to lighten the mood. ‘Have you forgiven him?’

‘No, not really. I know he’ll lose you eventually and then it’ll be every man for himself.’ Oliver tried to link his fingers through mine as we waited for the coffees to arrive. I moved my hands away.

I never did fancy Oliver. He might have made an ideal partner but he wasn’t Mitch. Perhaps we all fool ourselves. Oliver may have fantasised about a future together but I was no better, unable to imagine a future without Mitch.

As we buttoned up against the cold, Oliver handed me a small box, neatly wrapped in gold paper.

‘To be opened on Christmas morning.’ He kissed me lightly on both cheeks and we wished each other all kinds of seasonal joy.

‘For the record, I could have murdered Mitch for stealing you away from me. I might yet.’ He smiled back as he headed for the tube and waved goodbye over his shoulder.

I watched him, relieved that the holidays would put some distance between us.

11

Arthur

It was only ten o’clock when I left Ted and my mother.

I struggled back through the snow drifts which had ambushed the traffic. Abandoned cars were strewn across the pavements. Stranded drivers rubbed their hands together to keep warm, swapped stories and shared thermos flasks. Great in a crisis; that was the Brits.

‘Good evening. Anything I can do to help?’

‘Nothing you can do, mate. I think we’re here for the night.’

It perked me up to offer unwanted services and a sense of charitable well-being settled on my shoulders as I made my way back down the High Road towards Finchley. The crisp night air helped to restore my humour as the cloying claustrophobia faded into the background.

It was only at the corner of Gladstone Avenue, a couple of roads down from what I had christened our road, that I saw them.