Airport.

The fifth of December, and Heathrow had already put on her Christmas outfit.

Soft blue lighting arranged in the manner of a snowfall hung from the ceiling of Terminal Four; and the food outlets were serving turkey-and-cranberry sandwiches.

It didn't feel much like Christmas, though, as I sat opposite Bluefish in one of the aforementioned outlets with one of the aformentioned sandwiches -it had gone 4pm, and we were both aware that our time together was now short.

Our three weeks together had elapsed, and she was leaving England at just after eight o'clock. I estimated that, with her needing to check in and jump through the hoops required to board, we'd got a couple of hours left and no more.

I got the idea in my head that my lips were a timing device - every utterance slicing off another chunk of whatever remained, knives instead of the hands of a clock - so I was sparing with my words.

Words, anyway, are difficult when one's fate is already decided. The only meaningful sequence in such circumstances is a statement asserting that you embrace the inevitable. Everything else is nonsense.

We were fairly quiet, then, when the elderly lady asked if she could sit at our table. Of course, we consented, you're more than welcome. I expected her to just sit quietly while I trained my gaze upon Bluefish, trying to take 'photographs with my eyes,' so that I might recall them as I'm falling to sleep, as I wake up again.

The lady, though, was anything but quiet. A non-exhaustive list of her topics of conversation in the space of some 30 minutes or so: the Meredith Kercher murder trial; her own forthcoming trip to India; the reasons why I wasn't accompanying Bluefish to Australia; whether or not cartons of orange juice can be taken on aeroplanes; previous visits to the far east; her knowledge of Australian geography.

Bluefish did the bulk of the talking; I sat there dumb as a post. I felt simultaneously sad and relieved: sad because the pure agony of the inevitable was denied to us, two hearts thumping in unison like synchronished stop-watches. Relieved because I didn't have to experience the unique and difficult pain of separation.