A riot of blossoms on the branches and couples stroll in the park despite the chill. Spared my customary twelve hour stint, time stretches ahead. I recall my wallflower days, the most hated girl in school, a pariah abducted by the seniors at knifepoint to account for my principles in front of their impromptu inquisition in the common room with its open windows to coax the illicit smoke into the playing fields. I learned the lesson that intelligence is not valued in a woman the hard way. I recall the lobbed bricks, the spitting and the sneering, the defect I would not recant. MK escaped to medical school at seventeen whilst I stayed on, outwardly invulnerable to the taunts. The mixed P.E. lessons where the boys were lined up against the climbing bars on one side and the girls along the other with the aim of drilling traditional dance steps into our awkward frames were the most traumatic. Bravado and embarrassment amongst the trouser-wearers, demure downward glances and half-concealed nudges amongst those swathed in skirts and skin-coloured tights (I did not approve of any deviation from the strict uniform regulation, my foolish insistence on respecting them in every detail – absence of ear-rings, length of lower garment and white socks – understandably attracting ridicule). I knew I would never be picked, ascribing my unwanted state to ugliness, waltzing with whichever girl found herself in a similar predicament (we outnumbered the boys), extracting my revenge during Strip the Willow by spinning manically and releasing my armlock without warning. I was vehement that I would never marry and refused my rubella vaccination on the grounds that I had no intention of ever becoming pregnant. The pain I felt was the pain of not conforming, the stigma of remaining unattached, of failure.

They lean close over restaurant tables, fingertips touching, eyes glinting, thousands of anonymous hotel rooms in which to seek refuge undetected. He thinks very deeply and would not commit lightly. Perhaps he is merely intrigued by my desire. Stand back, the touch-paper has been lit and I surge skywards, uncontrolled, a burst of coloured sparks, fading. He does not haunt the bars (nor do I as a rule), where the available gather. I could engineer a chance meeting in the corridor, yet we would both recognise the artificiality. I could invite him for coffee, or dinner without arousing suspicion from the outside, yet he is aware of the subtext and I fear being gutted, sliced down the middle, my carcass suspended on a hook for all to view, an absurd anatomical specimen. Two idle dreams have haunted me. One that he would drive me back from our dinner that I would press my lips to his, breathing him in before steadying myself and walking through the front door. The other that his rejection would be plain that I would devise a pretext to go into the kitchen, grab the sharpest knife and sever my carotid artery, bleeding to death on the tiles with him supporting my head. If he did indeed reject me, it was too subtle for me to notice. I had dulled my senses with an entire bottle before departing and allowed him to pour during the meal. The naked bulb upstairs shone into the night, I could not bear even to look at him, fumbling with the handle, thanking him for the lift. I could not sleep and insisted on opening another Hungarian white, its crisp dryness biting into my tongue. Inaction torments me, yet I feel paralysed. Inhibitions reinforce the stereotypes of propriety, my ideals unable to overwrite the absorbed messages, the longing for him to take the initiative.