‘It won’t hit you until you get to the airport,’ one of my friends said over dinner at The Hollywood Arms. She was right – it wasn’t until the morning of my flight, when Monique, whom I’d been staying with, said she wasn’t good at goodbyes that it sunk home. It was only a short flight to Amsterdam, but I wouldn’t be able to see my friends quite as regularly.

During my last week in London, Hot Danish was frantically trying to get the flat refurbished in time for my arrival, so his calls were infrequent. As the time drew closer I started to get more anxious – what if he wasn’t there when I arrived. He was at the airport an hour before my plane landed. ‘I didn’t want to give you any ammunition,’ he told me later.
‘Our relationship isn’t a war,’ I replied.

The flat wasn’t ready but HD had achieved a lot in a week. I was enjoying my Sex and the City moment – the second bedroom was being transformed into a walk-in wardrobe. The following evening we had dinner in Bar 22 with his ex flatmate, Paul. ‘How is the flat coming along?’ he asked. I gave him a quick update on HD’s work. ‘He always said that as soon as I moved out he’d transform my room into a walk-in wardrobe.’

Back in his friend’s spare room later that night I told HD how disappointed I was that the walk-in wardrobe had been planned all along when I thought he was doing it for us. ‘If you weren’t moving over, I wouldn’t have bothered to refurbish the flat. I’d have just moved into that room with my old flatmate,’ he said. I remembered Monique having previously said that he’d never have bothered to decorate were I not coming and I felt reassured.