I recognised her straight away , as we stood alongside each other in the Ladies at the airport departure lounge. She was combing her hair in the mirror as I struggled in vain with an uncooperative soap dispenser.

‘Anne! Fancy meeting you here!’

Her momentary surprise quickly turned to pleasure as she hugged me. She hadn’t changed noticeably; a fraction plumper, maybe, but no more so than I since our last meeting, three years earlier. At her wedding, as it happened. The buddy-buddiness had already been fading at that stage, but we’d kept in touch with the occasional letter and annual Christmas card.

‘I’m just freshening up ready for the flight,’ she told me breezily, ‘it was delayed an hour.’

‘Same here.’

‘I’m off to Ibiza for a fortnight. All on my own. For the first time since... oh, I don’t know how long! Single again and making the most of it!’

I knew of her messy split with Alan. ‘How are you finding it?’ I asked, somewhat awkwardly.

‘Very hard,’ she admitted, ‘but last week I realised there’s no turning the clock back. Make the most of it, I decided. So here I am.’ She paused. ‘I didn’t tell you all the details, did I?’

I shook my head. But I knew them, all the same.

‘Well, you know it all fell apart when Alan went to Tokyo for the firm for six weeks?’

‘You didn’t want to go with him,’ I agreed.

‘It meant everything to him. I had to pretend to be as excited as he was. If he clinched the Tokyo deal the promotion was his and we’d have to relocate to Tokyo. Great money; car and apartment provided - a dream come true for Alan.’

‘But a nightmare for you?’

‘Not that I could tell him that. It was awful, it really was.’

‘I can imagine.’

She looked at me as though she was sure that I couldn’t.

‘The first week was the worst. He phoned every day to let me know how well it was going. The deal was in the bag from day one, really. I went off to the disco Saturday night, just to escape the pressure. Met Steve there.’

‘He always did love his dancing, didn’t he?’

‘Oh God,’ she groaned, ‘it sounds so stupid now, but eventually one thing led to another. Not straight away. But those last three weeks while Alan was away, Steve came home with me almost every night.’ She smiled sheepishly. ‘I was a bloody fool, wasn’t I?’

I smiled sympathetically. ‘These things tend to just happen. You can’t blame yourself.’

I already knew of her affair, from other sources. It hadn’t come as any surprise. She and Steve had always been birds of a feather, right from our days at school together. Even when we’d fledged out into careers, they’d remained close. Everyone assumed they’d end up together. The biggest surprise had been Sean.

‘To be honest, Anne,’ I said, after a moment’s silence, ‘you were always perfect for each other, you and Steve. I always felt that maybe you’d married Alan on the rebound. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t say that. But...’

She nodded. ‘I know. Perhaps I did. But it’s only now he’s gone that I realise what I had. I really did love him, you know.’

I’d always loved him too. Well, fancied him, from afar. ‘Why on earth did you mess around with Sean?’ I asked, perhaps insensitively.

She grimaced. ‘Sean!’

‘One minute you and Steve were bosom buddies, the next you were chasing Sean and having to dodge Steve’s daggers!’ It had been bugging me all these years, I needed to know, however insensitive.

Anne smiled. ‘You lot thought we were the perfect couple, but it seemed to me that I was just beating my head against the wall. Friends we may have been, but romance... HUH! Didn’t seem to be a ghost of a chance. So I took a shine to Sean. Whereupon jealousy reared its sudden and unexpected head. Steve finally revealed his true colours, but I was too infatuated with Sean to notice.’

‘Where did he meet Sean?’ I asked, trying to think back. He hadn’t been at school with us, or in our crowd. ‘I’d never seen him before that evening, when Steve introduced him to us all and you made an immediate play for him.’

‘I don’t know where they met. But I wish to God they hadn’t.’ She managed to raise another smile. ‘Oh well, it’s all water under the bridge now.’

A lot of water under the bridge. She’d fallen out irrevocably with Steve; never had got anywhere with the totally uninterested Sean; and ended up with Alan. But first love never dies, so they say.

‘Alan clinched the deal and got the promotion,’ Anne said, after another lengthy pause, ‘I told you that in my last letter, didn’t I?’

I nodded.

‘I didn’t come clean on how we really ended, though. He had six months to tie up loose ends over here, then we were to be off. Round about this week some time, as it happens. Maybe that’s why I suddenly got this urge to travel. Anyway, there was no letting him down gently. He came home and I told him straight away that I’d been seeing Steve.’

‘Wasn’t that a bit rash?’

‘With hindsight. But I had some crazy idea that those three weeks together actually meant something. A huge scene, of course. Awful. But I didn’t care. I packed my bags and skipped off to Steve’s.’

The soap had finally relented and Anne’s hair frizzed with static. We moved toward the door with an air of finality.

‘It didn’t last between you, then?’ I ventured.

‘Didn’t last?!’ She snorted with disgust. ‘It didn’t even start!’ She slipped her comb back into her handbag. ‘You know what it was, don’t you? Get your own back time for the way I’d behaved over Sean. He always was a vengeful little bastard, Steve.’

‘What did he do, then?’

‘Sod all! I found his flat, knocked at the door - suitcase in hand, a whole new life ahead of me.’

‘And he turned you away?’

‘Not Steve. He didn’t even bother coming to the door at all. I could hear him in the kitchen, laughing to himself as he cooked their evening meal.’

Their evening meal? Oh-oh. ‘Who answered, then?’ I asked.

She made a face. ‘Sean, that’s who. Bloody Sean.’ She shook her head. ‘Talk about blind! I was a bloody idiot, wasn’t I?’

I gave her a hug. ‘We must meet up, when we’re both back in the country again. Christmas, maybe.’

‘That’s definite. Listen, you didn’t say where you were off to?’

‘Just a business trip,’ I began, but was interrupted by the final call for her flight.

‘I’ll send you a postcard!’ she called back cheerfully, as she hurried out towards the gates.

I silently wished her well and counted my own blessings. Fate was a strange thing, but it had certainly treated me kindly.

'Last call for flight 307 to Tokyo' buzzed the public address.

I hurried across to the departure gate and kissed my partner appreciatively.

‘Sorry I was so long, Alan, but you won’t believe who I met in the Ladies.’