A memoir of times past. It was, I think, the carefully sought out and purchased pale pink cardigan that was the final insult. It screamed for a reaction, and shoved him further into resentment.

O, the expectation welling in a young girl’s breast. The trembling anticipation. The over-elaborate preparations. It was always teetering at the top of a slippery slope to catastrophic bathos.

I’d even ordered flowers from a very expensive florist in Sloane Street to be delivered well in advance of my fragrant arrival. Of course, being Valentine’s Day, they didn’t get there until after I did. In spite of repeated, frantic phone calls. And were ignored, poked at, with a studied air of “what’s this?”. Mostly because he hadn’t even started to live up to my expectations, and he knew it. And the neglectful will always punish the one neglected for showing them up.

My cousin took a picture of me that evening and, if I say so myself, I did look the business
We had been travelling in India, and I waited hourly for a proposal. Going through dysentery, suspected cholera and severe altitude sickness together has that effect – if we can get through this, we can get through anything.

Only it didn’t come, and it didn’t come. The nearest thing I got was a sly reminder that you could get tax relief on two mortgages if you weren’t married.

I arrived, all pink and sweetly pretty. I had romantic dreams that make me blush now. How cold, how cold was the dreadful vertiginous drop into realisation. He not only hadn’t cooked a delicious dinner for two, or lit a single candle, he didn’t want me there at all.

He sullenly offered me a glass of off wine. Shortly afterwards a dreadful friend of his pitched up, and they slowly and efficiently froze me out. The friend’s advice to my love was, “Tell her she’s fat, that keeps them under control.”

I left, weeping, and weighing 8st, in the cold night. And went back to my lonely bed.

But, reader, I did marry him about a year later. If you can go through that level Valentine’s misery, you can go through anything.