When I fell in love with Mitch, you, the first time, I was like a prisoner of my own making. I counted the minutes, one at a time, until the hour of our arranged tryst came round. I would set off, relieved and over-excited to consummate the longings that filled my being. You were like a drug. I craved the fix like a heroin addict.

When you disappeared, time became the enemy from whom there was no escape. Misery and time were linked. They gripped me in their vice. I was naïve to suspect that the obsessive feelings of desire could be transferred easily to another suitor.

I called the ten years that had passed my acceptance decade. I had reined in the natural passions and buried the libidinal longings that raged within. I began to accept the aching emptiness believing that the illusion of forever after love was purely a ruse to aid procreation; nothing more. It sucked us in and spat us out.

I put the tatty piece of card with your scribbled phone number in my bedside drawer, pulling it out every so often to look at it. Each time my stomach flipped with old familiar longing.

I waited one week and one day, ticking off the seconds, minutes and hours until I could wait no longer. At last I picked up the phone.

You answered after one ring.

We arranged to meet in Highgate, The Spaniards Inn, at eight the next night. I tried to quell the excitement when you told me to name the time and the place. You’d be there. Hope toyed dangerously with my emotions.

It was a Monday night so I spoke to Arthur, as usual, telling him I was getting an early night. He hadn’t been as intense since the cinema trip, phoning less often and within a much-less-regimented time frame. However, he was far from my mind as I set off for my date with destiny.

Being late was a last-ditch attempt at holding on to a modicum of self-respect. I drove round and round the pub at least half a dozen times so that I would be at least fifteen minutes late. An extra fifteen minutes on top of the ten years seemed risible but it was a vital fifteen minutes in the passage of time; in the passage of my time.

You were there, two glasses of white wine in front of you, with a plate of peanuts, salted, alongside. I pushed past the customers at the bar, weaving through the old familiar space to reach you. The past decade melted away. Everything was as it used to be.

‘Rebecca,’ was all you said. You stood up and kissed me, gently near my lips and then impulsively hugged me, pulling me tight. Of course you were wearing the aftershave I’d bought you. A new bottle, I guessed. The scent took my breath away.