Understated and underwhelmed by everything going on around you, you stood out for not standing out. Watching. Waiting. Mentally digesting. A not-so-casual observer, surveyor of the social-circus. Banana-skin skidding and water-squirting flowers all about, but your stance on the sidelines had a certain wisdom in its detachment.

As we were introduced I could see you were impressed in your wholly unimpressed way; the nonchalant half-smile you gave me was plenty amidst an otherwise OTT back-drop which was never, could never be, enough. The show continued around us, full throttle, but it somehow faded so that I was no longer aware of its carnival. There was only awareness of us and the feeling I was saved, a swell of relief that you'd found me at long last. Not too late, never too late. Just complicated.

Romance is so difficult to define, to substantiate. My husband talked oh-so-sweetly to me, bought me flowers, expensive jewellery, wrote me poems, sent me cute cards - but it was never romantic, not really. All nice to have, but pretty meaningless. He also liked to sleep with other women. But you and I seemed to have that true romantic connection right from the start. Not conventionally, I guess, but it was definitely there. We talked pretty incessantly. About the most unlikely of subjects. The virtues of The Hay diet springs to mind - in particular, the positive effect it has on one's bowel movements! We truly were talking shit, but it meant something.

I remember your shock when you heard I was married - taken aback because you thought I was too young, with too much life. I swear I saw the blue sparkle of yours eyes dull in that moment, their hopefulness quashed. You weren't alone; it made me sad also. In an instant, our beginning, with all it could offer, mutated. 'Once upon a time' skipped cruelly to 'The End' without any of the fairy-tale happiness in- between. I 'belonged' to someone else. But I needed you, someone real, to make being 'me' alright. How exactly could I reach out to you like that, tell you, in a crowded Friday-night bar, surrounded by a heaving mass of haw-hawing City-type idiots on their ritual end-of-week bender?