Retrospectively, I divide the universe into two temporal zones, and inevitably the atheist author realises the Christians got there first.
Christians refer to the dark days before the miracle birth, and the golden age which came after it: before Christ and after Christ, BC and AD. Similarly, I now speak of before Louise, and after Bluefish. The part in the middle - during Bluefish - I don't yet have the strength to write about.
I recall with a painful wince the day Bluefish left England for the last time, and I presented her with a souvenir of what had been (before Louise) without doubt the most magical night of my life. Was it the occasion of my first child emerging, squawking and bloodied, from its mother? When I smiled into the eyes of my quivering bride and asserted that I do?
Anyone who has ever skimmed through my writing will realise that those two events have never actually happened - I've got no children, and I've never been married. It should come as no surprise, then, that I'm actually referring to the night when Barnsley knocked Chelsea out of the FA Cup, and not some glowing personal achievement.
During lulls at work, or when I can't sleep, I can still see the ball swing across the penalty area, onto Kayode Odejayi's head and into Chelsea's net. I must've more-or-less blacked out at that point, because I don't know what I did next.
I think about the sheer improbability of beating Chelsea, and it no longer seems real, even though I was there, and screaming so hard that my lungs threatened to come up through my throat. So, before Bluefish departed, I presented her with a commemorative scarf from that game, declaring: this signified the unlikely and the amazing, and you overshadowed it when you came into my life. Take it, because you have superceded Barnsley 1 Chelsea 0.
What about after Bluefish? Is there an event which can cause the soul to vibrate in ecstasy in the same way as Kayode Odejayi's header beyond Carlo Cudicini? No. Not yet - and perhaps not ever. There is, though, no reason why it shouldn't happen.
The Barnsley-Chelsea scarf serves as a worm-hole, a passage across time. It existed before Louise, was presented during Bluefish, and now acts as a reminder that unlikely events can and do happen. The short-lived woman, a dream-fragment of an impossible relationship, multiplied by the improbable night extends from BL to AB, and the line stretches ahead as far as I can see.
