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holding an electric-blue marker pen in his hand, and I mentally wrote him off as a boring marketing man. He was ordinary looking. Medium height. Nondescript clothes. Nothing, in short, to write home about.
    But by the end of the day I thought he was, quite simply, the most incredible man I had ever met. We all did. Even though none of us had actually met him at that stage. That came later. Afterwards. At the drinks party where he singled me out, came over to talk to me. Looked deep into my eyes and told me I had interesting ideas. And all of a sudden the colours in the room became far brighter, the lines sharper, and I remember thinking that perhaps this was what it was like to fall in love.
    Eventually we sat at a table in the corner, with other people who had paid fortunes to come on this course, and Martin fascinated all of us with his stories, his confidence, his charm. But I knew I was special. I knew that there was some sort of link between the two of us, something magical, something that would lead to more.
    Our table-fellows gradually started to leave. ‘Got an early start tomorrow,’ they’d say with a wink at Martin, who would laugh politely. Each time he heard it. And eventually it was just the two of us, and Martin turned to me and tugged the elastic band out of my hair, which actually hurt terribly, but I winced in silence because I was aware it was supposed to be a romantic gesture.
    ‘You have beautiful hair,’ he said to me, while I blushed furiously and tried to think of something to say.
    ‘It’s a frizzy mess,’ I ended up muttering, instantly regretting spoiling the mood.
    ‘No, no,’ Martin murmured, ‘it’s quite lovely. Would you like to come up for a drink? It’s rather noisy down here, don’t you think? And I have a wonderful Scotch upstairs.’
    Of course I knew that whisky meant sex, but I was somehow mesmerized by him, by the fact that the man to whom everyone in the room wanted to talk was giving me his undivided attention, and I meekly followed him upstairs.
    We spent the next three nights together. I would sit in the front row during his lectures and feel a glow of warmth each time he looked at me, aware that the rumours had already started to circulate, but not caring. Only caring that Martin would look at me again by the time I counted to twelve, because that would mean he was going to fall in love with me. Even I wasn’t naïve enough to believe he might love me already.
    I like to think that if I had met Martin with the wisdom and cynicism of my current thirty-one years, instead of the romanticism and dreams of twenty-four, there are two things that would have been different.
    The first is that I would never have slept with him in the first place, because now I know that these course lecturers regularly look for someone as I was then: a young shy girl, preferably rather plain, who would be flattered and impressed with their false charm and attention.
    The second certainty is that when the relationship continued after the four-day course, I would have known that those times when he said he couldn’t see me because he was working, those nights when he’d rush out of bed after sex and leave, the fact that he never gave me his telephone number, only a pager, meant only one thing.
    Of course I should have known he was married. But you see what you want to see, and you hear what you want to hear. I didn’t know better. I was so flattered, so swept up by someone, anyone , telling me I was beautiful, I didn’t stop to think about anything else.
    Si knew. Although he didn’t say anything at the time. He once tentatively asked me if I thought he might be married, and I was so furious with him he never brought it up again. Until I knew for certain. At which point Si sniffed and said, ‘I told you so.’
    ‘I hate it when people say I told you so,’ I said.
    ‘I know. I’m sorry. But I told you so.’
    And so it went on.
    The whole Martin Malarkey (Si’s expression, not mine)