When 2022 arrived, the year began quietly, although I celebrated my birthday in January.
Around Christmas or my birthday, Stephen gave me a beautiful silver eternity ring, half-set with what I think were lab-grown diamonds. He told me that while buying it, he’d joked with the sales assistant, “How can you have half an eternity? Isn’t that a paradox?” The full eternity ring would hurt his wallet so he settled for the half. I found it funny at the time.
Years later, the joke would acquire a meaning neither of us could possibly have understood then. Perhaps half an eternity wasn’t such a paradox after all.
In March I had arranged to meet my sister and her eldest daughter in London to visit the Van Gogh immersive experience, but about a week beforehand I contracted Covid for the second time. It meant that Stephen and I didn’t see each other while I recovered, which, given how intensely we had been spending time together, felt like quite a separation.
So when I was finally better and we arranged to meet at the station before heading into London, I found myself standing outside eagerly watching for him to arrive.
Then suddenly, this handsome man appeared, walking towards me in baggy jeans, a faded white Union Jack T-shirt and a dark blazer. For a few seconds, I genuinely didn’t realise it was Stephen. Perhaps it was the time apart, or simply seeing him approaching from a distance rather than already being beside me, but I suddenly saw him with fresh eyes.
He looked so effortlessly cool and incredibly sexy.
And I remember having that wonderful little rush of disbelief all over again.
That’s my boyfriend.
I still couldn’t quite believe that this gorgeous man walking towards me was mine.
While we were in London, we wandered into a cool vintage shop where Stephen spotted a ring he liked. I offered to buy it for him so that he would have a ring too. We both liked the idea of wearing something that represented our love for each other — a small, physical reminder of our connection that we could carry with us wherever we went.
For Stephen, perhaps it could serve another purpose too. He had once described me as being somewhat “out of sight, out of mind,” and I hoped that feeling the ring on his finger might remind him of me in those moments when I wasn’t there.
March brought another experience that, a year earlier, I would never have imagined sharing with Stephen.
My bosses invited all their staff to the Cheltenham races to watch their horse run. It wasn’t something I would ordinarily have chosen to do, but I knew Stephen would absolutely love it, so we went together. We placed a few bets, enjoyed the atmosphere and, rather surprisingly, came home with more money than we had arrived with.
It was one of those simple days that I remember fondly because there was no drama attached to it. We were simply enjoying being together.
And that was becoming the story of our relationship.
By the spring, things were going incredibly well. The intensity of those first few months after Stephen’s dismissal had settled into something that felt much more comfortable. We were spending time together, trying new things and making memories. There was a growing sense that we were building a life rather than simply experiencing a romance.
So when my mum told me she was planning a trip to Denmark to visit my elderly grandmother and wanted someone to accompany her, I immediately thought of Stephen.
Denmark wasn’t simply another holiday destination for me. It was somewhere deeply connected to my childhood and my family, a place filled with memories and meaning. Inviting Stephen into that part of my life felt significant.
I wanted him to see the places that had helped shape me.
And, as it turned out, Stephen was an absolute pleasure to travel with.
From the moment we got up to catch the plane until the moment we landed back in England, he was a dream travel companion. He was enthusiastic about everything. Every new place, every unfamiliar experience, every little detail seemed to interest him.
Knowing how excited he could become about something new, you can imagine how much he enjoyed travelling around a new country and meeting members of my extended family.
I loved showing him Denmark.
I took him to places that were important to me, but I also wanted to find things that I thought he would enjoy. One of my favourites was Den Fynske Landsby in Odense, on the Danish island of Funen.
It is an open-air museum recreating a 19th-century rural community from the time of Hans Christian Andersen, with thatched timber-framed buildings, historic gardens, animals wandering around and staff dressed in period costume.
It was exactly the sort of place where I wanted to stop and look at everything.
And one of the things I loved about travelling with Stephen was that he let me.
He didn’t hurry me through places or make me feel that I was taking too long. He would happily wander alongside me while I read the information, looked at the buildings and took everything in.
That might sound like a small thing, but it wasn’t to me.
I remembered when my ex-husband and I visited an exhibition once. Within fifteen minutes, he had made his way to the exit and was waiting for me. I never felt that I could take my time, read the cards beside the displays or properly lose myself in what I was looking at.
Stephen was a completely different experience.
With him, I didn’t feel rushed.
I felt free to be curious.
We also took a two-day trip to Copenhagen, including a visit to Tivoli Gardens.
Tivoli held some of my happiest childhood memories, so returning there after so many years was incredibly nostalgic. But this time, I wasn’t simply revisiting somewhere from my past.
I was sharing it with someone I loved.
There was something particularly special about watching Stephen experience somewhere that had been part of my childhood. I could show him the things I remembered, tell him the stories and see it all again through his eyes.
Those were the moments when our relationship felt bigger than just the two of us.
I was beginning to weave him into my life.
And he seemed to fit.
By May, our adventures continued.
We attended the annual UK gun show. If someone had told me before meeting Stephen that I would one day happily spend a day shooting rifles, firing clay pigeons, doing archery and throwing axes, I would probably have laughed at them.
But because of Stephen, I went.
And I loved it.
I was surprisingly good at the shooting, which was probably as much of a surprise to me as it was to anyone else.
The axe throwing was a different matter.
I became frightened that I might hurt myself or someone else and eventually started crying because I couldn’t bring myself to throw the axe.
It was one of those moments where Stephen saw a side of me that wasn’t particularly brave or adventurous.
But I was beginning to discover that our relationship gave me permission to try things I would never have tried on my own.
Then, in June, we went on a five-day bushcraft course.
This was a little more intense than our previous adventure with bushcraft. We learned practical skills and spent much of the time outside, getting our hands dirty and learning how to survive with very little.
I skinned a rabbit.
I carved a spoon.
I learned how to start a fire.
I slept in a hammock.
We even learned how to make cordage from nettle stems.
At one point, our guide demonstrated how to strip the leaves from a nettle stem in one quick movement without getting stung. He explained that the trick was to do it quickly and fearlessly.
Naturally, I said I wanted to try.
I did exactly as he instructed.
Unfortunately, my hand came up in a spectacular collection of blisters.
It was painful, but also hilarious, and it became another story we could laugh about afterwards.
The sex between us had been incredible that year too. We had become completely relaxed and comfortable with one another. We knew each other’s bodies, understood what we both enjoyed and felt free to be experimental and adventurous. There was playfulness to it, but also an easy familiarity. It was regular, affectionate and deeply satisfying, and it felt like another part of our relationship that simply worked.
I stopped believing that good sex could guarantee fidelity. But I would be lying if I said it didn’t give me a quiet sense of security. Of all the things I worried might go wrong between us, our sex life wasn’t one of them. There was no obvious lack, frustration or incompatibility for me to be concerned about. I certainly never imagined that Stephen might go looking elsewhere because something was missing between us.
In a relationship where I had once worried so much about his boundaries with other women, that became one more reason for me to believe I could finally stop worrying.
I also always reminded him how sexy I found him to be. Not only was it true but I hoped that would mean he was less likely to look for the validation somewhere else.
Looking back at those months, what stands out to me is how happy we were.
Not just occasionally happy.
Properly happy.
We were curious about the world and about each other. We were constantly doing things, discovering places, meeting people and creating experiences that were becoming part of our shared history.
There was a sense of adventure about us.
And there was something else beginning to happen too.
I was trusting him.
Not blindly, and not without the occasional wobble, but enough to let him further into the parts of my life that mattered to me. Denmark was my childhood. My family. My memories. Taking Stephen there felt like opening another door and inviting him further inside.
And he seemed to embrace it all.
So when, in July, we were invited back to Denmark for my grandmother’s 90th birthday, I couldn’t wait to go.
The first trip had been so wonderful that the idea of returning with Stephen filled me with excitement. This time there would be even more family, more memories and another opportunity to share something precious with him.
I had no reason to think it would be anything other than another happy chapter in our story.
I had no idea that, within that trip, something would happen that would change the way I saw Stephen, our relationship and myself.
Something that would rock my world in a way nothing before it had.
At the time, though, I knew none of that.
I was simply a woman deeply in love, looking forward to taking the man she loved back to a place that meant so much to her.
And I couldn’t have felt happier about the future we were building together.
