Apart from marking the day on which Marie married by going flying, I really have very few recollections of the following couple of months.

I'd resigned myself to the fact that she was now married and, as my friends had advised me, I should now leave her to get on with her new life.  So that's exactly what I did.

I was, not unnaturally, more than a little hurt by first the news and then the reality of her getting married and, after all, she had made her choice, so now I should deal with it.

The clandestine meetings had to stop, despite the fact that we had been seeing each other until quite close to the wedding, and I had to get on with my life.

Well as I recall, two or three months after the wedding I was driving down the motorway when my car phone rang.  At that time mobile phones were generally phone's which were installed in cars. The battery technology was yet to be devised which allows for the small pocket sized phones which are common now, so they tended to be quite large and cumbersome.

Also there was no such facility as caller ID, so there was no indication of the number let alone a stored name to show who was calling.

For some unknown reason, whenever Marie would call me on the phone she would announce herself in a Birmingham accent (heaven knows why as she'd never lived or spent any significant time there) by saying 'Graham..............it's me, Marie'.

Well on this occasion I answered the phone with my usual greeting, to be pleasantly surprised to hear the voice saying 'Graham..............it's me, Marie'.

That's as much as I remember, but suffice to say we must have met up within a very short time of that conversation.  As far as I was concerned if Marie wanted to see me, then that was fine and entirely different from me calling her and trying to rekindle an old relationship.

As far as I was concerned, I wasn't putting temptation in her way, she had contacted me and that was just fine.

I'm really not too sure, 12 years on, of what was going wrong with her marriage so early into it, but clearly things were not right.  I do remember her telling me that her husband was a very domineering person, had a very strong personality and, importantly for me, they were not having a great intimate side to their relationship.

We continued to communicate with each other, but still living in the marital home, I had to be more careful about how this happened.  At the time the most technically complex thing which home telephones could do was have last number redial and itemised bills.  Marie had to be careful about ringing me from home, as it would cause problems on both counts, therefore I would mostly call her.  If her husband answered I would invent a simple wrong number story or simply put down the phone (not too sophisticated !!).  As caller ID wasn't yet available the call was untraceable.  It hardly ever happened though as I would have a good idea when she was likely to be alone.

If there was some doubt, I would ring her number, let it ring twice and then put the phone down.  If she was in and able to talk she would call my number and let it ring once.  It was then safe for me to call her.  Elaborate I know, but that was about the only way that no evidence of calls in or out could be  made at that time. 

Well before too long December was fast approaching which meant two things.  Firstly it is my birthday on 11th December, and around that time of year office Christmas parties were being organised.

Happily, this particular year the two coincided and Marie agreed to come up to Manchester to be my guest at ICL's Christmas party.

It was a very good evening.  Marie immediately hit it off with some of the girls from the office, who were intrigued by this beautiful vivacious woman who I had brought to the party.  My recollection of it is that there was an immediate rapport with a couple of girls in particular, who seemed to pick up that firstly, Marie and I were very very comfortable with each other, and secondly that Marie was wearing rings on her wedding finger.

This caused an amount of questioning which was largely evaded, but which added an extra dimension to the evenings conversation.

It was just a perfect birthday for me.  Marie had got away from her husband to spend the evening with me, I had a great party to take her to and everybody got on well and immediately adopted Marie as not just 'my girlfriend' but as their new friend.

I was very proud.