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there wasn’t a night out that didn’t involve some woman thrusting her phone number into your trouser pocket.’
    ‘You exaggerate.’
    ‘You were a great big slag and don’t deny it.’
    ‘Am I supposed to defend myself?’
    ‘No,’ he sighs. ‘You’re supposed to tell me how to do it.’
    To listen to Pete, you’d think I was some sort of Aldous Snow figure in my pre-Gemma days. But we’re talking about a few flings, not six dancing girls and a two-litre bottle of Durex Play every week night.
    I will admit though that the first time Gemma and I crossed paths, the idea that one day we’d contemplate buying a house together would have filled me with . . . surprise.
    The reason wasn’t just because we’d have looked an unlikely couple physically, though at the time that was true, nor because I didn’t fancy her (also undeniable). It was because we were both on a date – with other people.
    I was nineteen, back from Cambridge for Christmas after my first term and technically living at home with Mum. In reality, I spent that break bunking in with people, including an old mate from school nicknamed ‘Stringfellow’, who’d quit Cardiff University to set himself up as a nightclub entrepreneur.
    I’d agreed to take my date for the evening to an insalubrious bar on the edge of Duke Street because two ‘contacts’ had offered ‘Stringfellow’ the unmissable opportunity of buying a stake in it. He wanted my opinion on the place while he cut his teeth at the bar, serving Cider and Black to Goths, bikers and miscellaneous reprobates, none of whom looked overly impressed with my nice V-neck jumper and Shockwaved fringe.
    My date, Terri, was small, blonde, stupendously bosomed and had the eyes of a possessed Barbie doll. I’d handed my number to her in a club the previous weekend, in such a drunken blur that I barely recognised her now. She’d brought with her this unfeasibly small handbag, from which an array of eyeliners and lipsticks kept tumbling. The solution, she decided, was getting ‘her man’ (that, apparently, was me) to put them in my coat pockets.
    It was clear when we pushed open the door that she wasn’t massively enthusiastic about the venue. In fact, she looked at the clientele as if she’d been presented with the still-beating hearts of two slaughtered lambs.
    Still, Terri decided to make the best of a bad job and seduce me. Unfortunately, I couldn’t dredge up a flicker of attraction to her. Besides – date from hell that this probably makes me – my interest was already diverted: to a girl with a nose ring, dreadlocks and – I swear this is what I thought – the face of an angel. Poetic, I know.
    From her body language – the crossed arms, the lack of eye-contact – her evening was not going well either.
    The guy she was with, a skinny, tattooed bloke with an explosion of facial hair, was pleading with her, flirting with tears one minute and rage the next. She’d clearly had a few and was tiring of his advances, though was too polite to punch him in the face, despite how tempting it must have been.
    I was mesmerised by her. The defiant crook of her brow. The smart, glittering eyes. The full mouth I knew would light the place up when she smiled.
    As Terri encouraged me to engage in a conversation about the merits of stockings and suspenders, I asked her to pause while I ordered more drinks. But when I turned back from the bar, the girl who’d caught my attention was gone. Her date was left standing, the only guy in the place who hadn’t realised she was probably never going to return from the ladies, at least not this decade.
    The next thing I knew, Terri’s arms were around me and she was running her tongue along my ear, like she was trying to fish something out of it. I can’t remember much after that, nor indeed the exact events that led to Terri storming out after I’d failed to ravish her.
    I do remember sitting there in a haze of alcohol, giving Terri a couple of