End of THE LINE

Dazzling, handsome James was on the other side of the platform – and I couldn’t even look him in the eye

- Lin Silver

The party’s over. Everyone who drank too much, which was just about everyone, has staggered out and fallen straight into the nearest taxi. Not me, though. Anyway, the train’s good enough for me. The cold draught of late winter and early spring whistles down the tunnel behind me and I shiver, pulling my coat tighter round my ancient party dress.

To others I probably seem a bit behind the times. Maybe that’s why James and I never… Well, it’s done and dusted now. What are the odds I’ll ever see him again? One in a zillion. He never actually said where he was going, where this new mega-job he’d landed actually was – and possibly that was just so I wouldn’t know.

I don’t want it to, but my mind starts straying back more than three years to when James Douglas strode into the office with his jacket slung over his shoulder and plenty of attitude. He was good-looking and you’d have to be blind not to see it. My feelings on that first sighting were all over the place.