I stared at him. For a moment, it seemed as if I somehow had gained a heightened sense of myself and of my surroundings; I heard myself breathing, slowly and deliberately, I heard the pacey thumping of my heart, heard the rustle of his clothes as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. In the city, which although we were standing right in its very heart seemed far, far away, I heard the noises of a late Saturday night – people laughing and shouting, music from bars and clubs, the bleep of a pedestrian crossing. From somewhere – must have been towards Trafalgar Square – I heard the sound of a police or ambulance siren, or maybe fire brigade. I remember wondering what could be going on. Then I looked back up into his eyes.

How to describe that look? Could have been guilt, possibly pity. Or maybe it was relief, though I would have been crushed at such a notion. Funnily, I did not yet feel anything myself. It all seemed so bizarre. But when I opened my mouth to speak, words were not forthcoming, and I found to my dismay that I had to turn my head slightly to prevent him from seeing the fact that my eyes had suddenly misted over. I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t force myself to move my head and stare him down.

Eventually I had to – he touched my cheek, pushing my head gently up towards his. I saw there were tears in his eyes, too, and I wanted to scream at him, to hit him and to punch him and to try to get him to tell me why. Why. I did none of those things.

The best I could manage was a croaked and stuttered ‘I don’t understand’, spoken between half-sobs, my head in his hands. He simply told me it was for the best, that he couldn’t deal with it – with us – anymore. I didn’t know what to say so I remained silent, my mind even more disordered by his touch. He bent his neck slightly, leaning down so he could kiss me on the forehead. I experienced once again his familiar smell, that which I had learned to love. He had always eschewed eaux de cologne, unlike me, and so his fragrance was his own. I can still recall it.

In those last seconds, I began to feel slightly sick, physically, and my senses, which only seconds ago had been heightened, began to blur. My breathing became shallower as he let go my head. As if from a distance, I heard him say ‘goodbye, Nick.’ I looked up, he was walking off. A terrible panic began to embrace me, and I felt an almost overpowering urge to run after him, to tell him that I loved him, that I’d change, that it would be different. I’d do anything. But I did not run. I stood, in a dark street off The Strand, and watched him go silently off towards Holborn.

I cannot say how long I stood, staring. Long after he had turned the corner and vanished from my sight – maybe from my life altogether – I stood and stared after him, as if by concentrating hard enough I could reverse the evening’s events and cause him to walk not away from me but back to me, restoring my grief to happiness, a sort of emotional necromancy. But I felt it in my gut that the fight was lost.

Turning, I put my hands in the pockets of my trench coat, collar turned up for protection against the harsh November nigh air, and began to walk back towards Villiers Street. My mind was in shock, my intellect in trauma. I couldn’t even begin to describe my emotions. So many conflicting thoughts, so many different feelings all vying for my attention. It felt like there were a thousand different voices in my head, all screaming different pieces of advice, or replaying different memories. I especially kept seeing his face, hearing his voice. Seeing in my mind’s eye the places we had been together, and where I had enjoyed some of the happiest days of my life. It was too much for me, I could not deal with the assault on my psyche.

For some reason I became very concerned about three rats I had just seen run past me, in the gutter of this strange, quite little residential street. I remembered that in London, so they said, you were never more than half a metre away from a rat. Or was it a whole metre? I argued with myself about this stupid piece of trivia; it helped silence the conflict in my brain as I walked.

Coming back onto Villiers Street after the darkness and silence and solitude of my former location was like being smacked in the face. I blinked in the lights, confounded by the sounds of jollity and people having fun. How could they be having fun? I stood and watched, bewildered by all the people. Bustle and clamour. A pair of queeny guys tottered past me, arm-in-arm, drunk on their way to Heaven. One of them called out ‘hello handsome!’ I distantly remembered that I was still wearing my officer’s uniform, I must stand out. I didn’t respond, just stared back at him. I thought I saw hatred in his eyes, that he wanted to kill me. I don’t know why.

I had to get away, I had to get away. With the man still looking at me, not with hate but with puzzlement I now saw (what was wrong with me, why did I confuse it?) I began to run, down Villiers Street, past The Arches, past PriceWaterhouseCoopers. I bumped into about a dozen people, was called a dozen filthy names. I ran through the concourse of Embankment Tube Station and up onto the new footbridge across the Thames. I got halfway across, sprinting, the tails of my coat billowing behind me, before I collapsed to my knees, sobbing and sobbing. The tears came in floods, floods. I had never thought it in my power to cry so much, to posses such strong grief. Through my sobs I murmured the one phrase that meant more to me than any other – ‘I love you, I love you, I love you’.