You can’t cancel a precious reunion like this because of extreme agony

London. 4 pm. I’m on my way to meet James, the man I lived with before I met my husband.

We reconnected last summer after 30 years and have arranged to meet this afternoon at the National Gallery. Afterwards, he’s taking me to dinner and then on to the opera.

It might be a Mills and Boon, but for the fact that James is gay. Proper gay, that is, not Betsy both-ways and even when he might have been a tiny weeny bit Betsy both-ways all those years ago, we didn’t fancy each other anyway.