I should probably have been a mess inside at this point, but I was actually doing okay.

I had never been great at being alone, despite most of my need to be with someone being related to how I’ve felt about Maddie over the years. By that I mean that, yes, I had always wanted to be with her, but I was always interested in being close to someone, even when there was not an opportunity to be closer to Maddie.

If I had to choose, I would choose her every time, but I’ve never really had the chance to choose her. We were always either struggling with our friendship in the early days, in different parts of the world in later years, or in different stages in our lives.

I never felt as if there wasn’t a possibility for us, just that there was rarely the opportunity. Circumstances rarely brought us together at the right time.

The break up with Nadine was difficult, but by the time I had written the Facebook post I described in my last post, I had reset my head.

This was the time I figured out that I really didn’t need to be with someone to be happy. Being with someone would still have been amazing, but the overwhelming need I had always felt just wasn’t with me any longer.

Maddie was an amazing support through this period. It wasn’t that there was any doubt that she would be – and indeed, she always had been, but she was a massive part of me finding the inner peace I had found by this time.

I was focused on myself, and on my son.

That was all that mattered – yet Maddie was always there to listen. Despite being largely at peace and happy in life, there were definitely still days and nights – especially the nights – where sitting alone was hard work.

All it took was a phone call to Maddie – (who by this time was a bit over relationships too) – to hear her friendly voice, and sometimes just have a long silly chat about nothing at all to help me feel not alone.

We were like this for about two and a half years. The person each other would call when life was feeling a bit dark – the closest we had ever been, yet still not the closest we would ever be.

That would come some years later still.

Maddie allowed me to find a calmness and clearness that I had probably never felt before.

Was I about to fall in love with her again?

Yes, I was about to – but it would take me back to a mental space I had not been in since I first met her so many years earlier.

I loved her, but didn’t have the courage to tell her.

Again.

Despite my love for Nadine, and the connection we were sharing through our son, the love was never as strong as it needed to be.

It became apparent over time that it wasn’t going to last forever, and it was becoming clear that the relationship meant more to me than it did to Nadine.

That said, we did make it to almost eight-and-a-half years, the longest relationship I have had in my entire life – with every previous one measurable only in weeks or months.

There was no hate, nor any anger. We barely argued the entire time we were together, although there were frayed emotions when she decided to tell me it was time to move on from me.

I had felt it coming for some time, and in many respects we both tried really hard to keep a family together for our son – however because the relationship started in such a low-key way, just finding ourselves together one day, a lot of the things that form the basis of a strong and ongoing relationship just weren’t there.

The biggest problem I faced was that I didn’t know how to be in a relationship that was coming to an end.

Yes, I had been through the trauma of the time with the psychopath who tried to kill me, but in the end that was easy to walk away from. I wasn’t keen on being dead for her.

So a “normal” relationship coming to an end? I had zero experience of that, and it is fair to say that I didn’t cope very well.

I remember one Sunday afternoon when our son had spent the weekend with my parents, and tempers and emotions were high as I was getting ready to leave the house to collect him. I think it was the only time in the whole “death period” that voices had been raised.

I believe that was the moment we both understood that things had run their course. I cried and cried and cried the whole time I was driving the 40 minutes to pick him up, stopping only a few minutes before getting there to pull myself together.

We moved into separate rooms, and that crushed me. It felt like things were over, but I still wanted to try to sort things out until the last dying gasp of the relationship.

What hurt the most was that Nadine seemingly had no interest in trying at all.

To be clear – I blame neither myself nor Nadine for the relationship dying on the vine. Neither of us did anything “wrong” – (and we’ve always been friends despite it all) – and we’ll always be connected given we have a son together.

It just………..stopped working.

I didn’t move out straight away – I wanted to make sure I found the right place for me and our son, because it became clear pretty quickly that he was more interested in living with me, than with Nadine.

He still lives with me to this day, more than a decade later. We all still get along well, just that Nadine and I don’t work on an intimate level any longer.

When we did finally move, the only people who knew were our direct families. Mine and Nadine’s.

I didn’t even tell Maddie. We weren’t in as regular contact as we might otherwise have been, as I chose to respect the relationship Nadine and I were in – but we were casually in touch, mainly on Facebook.

I didn’t tell anyone for a good four or five months.

Despite things ending amicably, and living effectively as a single dad with my wonderful kiddo, I was torn apart inside. I cried myself to sleep most nights. Most days I simply just existed.

Out of bed, kiddo to school, off to work, collect kiddo from Nadine’s, and then home. That was my new normal, and I was so unfocused that I couldn’t break that cycle. I did nothing for myself. I hid myself away.

I didn’t talk about anything to anyone. I was in a trance, and I was not coping.

I hated being alone again.

Then one night, we were playing Wii Sports together in the lounge room, and something clicked in my head.

It was time to talk.

As soon as kiddo was in bed, I sat down at the computer and typed out a long Facebook post, restricted to just my most important friends.

Explaining where I was, what had happened – where I was inside my head and inside myself. I apologised for “going missing”. I bawled my eyes out the whole time. I had been holding it all in and now it was coming out.

Eventually I clicked “save”.

Before long, I got a bunch of “shocked emojis” and comments on how people were offering to be there whenever I needed an ear or a shoulder. No disrespect to any of those comments at all, but they kind of felt like “that’s what they are supposed to say”. It was appreciated though, of course.

Maddie of course was the comment I was looking for the most, and despite her being about the tenth person to respond, she was the first to not come up with the plain old “I’m here when you need someone” guff.

She proclaimed that she was proud of me, and that I was inspiring for tackling the whole thing head on and doing what was needed for me and kiddo.

That’s what I needed to hear, and that was the point I started coming back to life.

As an autistic man, I have always struggled to form relationships, and stay in them for any length of time when they do start.

That said, a couple of years later I would find myself in a relationship with a woman named Nadine. We had actually known each other for nearly five years, and we were good friends – but there wasn’t ever any hint of romance between us.

And we just “found” ourselves in a relationship one day. We never really dated, or talked about spending time together – we just found ourselves together, and before long it was becoming intimate – and sexually intimate at that.

This was both amazing and terrifying to me. I truly appreciated her and came to love her – although it perhaps wasn’t the strongest relationship you might find. It was perhaps more an extension of the friendship we’d had for years, and it was perhaps a time where we both needed someone.

Don’t get me wrong – I loved Nadine and was fully committed to being with her, but it wasn’t a “normal” relationship in the sense that hadn’t been romantic sparks flying left, right, and centre between us.

As I said, we just found ourselves together.

In those early times, it felt almost convenient to both of us – we needed each other, we really liked each other, and here we were.

The day we discovered Nadine was pregnant was utterly mind blowing. It wasn’t planned, but it was absolutely welcome. We both wanted very much to be parents, but I don’t think either of us were expecting that this would be the relationship from which that would come.

Nadine called me at work one day, and insisted that I needed to come home and take her to the doctor – I wasn’t sure why she couldn’t go by herself. She didn’t say the words, but somehow she managed to convey the understanding that it was “for something that I should be there for.”

She had actually been to the doctor first thing that same morning and had a pregnancy test. The return visit in the afternoon was to get the results. We had been living together for some months, and were seeing the same doctor who we both liked very much. He was kind enough to rush the test through, which is why we knew the same day.

She was indeed pregnant, and about six weeks along.

We told our families straight away of course, but you’re not “supposed” to tell anyone else until you’re in the second trimester, in case there are problems in that time – the riskiest time for a pregnancy. However, I told Maddie almost straight away too.

I didn’t want to not share it with her. It felt a little odd to be telling an old flame about it and I didn’t tell Nadine that I had. She did know about Maddie – she had come up in conversations throughout our long friendship – but I wasn’t sure Nadine would appreciate it being talked about to outsiders so early in the pregnancy.

For some reason though, I felt that Maddie needed to know about my pending fatherhood.

She was rapt for me, and rapt that I had gotten so far into a relationship that this was happening. She knew Nadine and I were together, but knowing that I was going to be a father made Maddie really happy.

We had talked in the past how I wanted to be one so much, so she completely appreciated my excitement, even if it were a little uncool that I would be sharing it with her on the first day.

That’s the thing about my autism – you either completely bottle up and don’t talk about things at all, or you completely overshare every thought and emotion with people who most likely don’t need to hear about them.

They are the polar extremes that happen inside of you. You don’t mean it, and you almost immediately regret some of the things you do and say. You still feel like they were the right things to do and say, but you doubt yourself and feel horrible straight away too.

I had always dreamed that this day would involve Maddie – that it would be a moment of joy between us about becoming parents together. It wasn’t between us, but my brain kept me within that dream, and it had to include Maddie.

Maddie was never an issue between Nadine and myself, but that was the only time I ever felt that I had been even just a little dishonest with her.

For the rest of the time, I was proud and over the moon to be with Nadine – and soon we would be sharing the joys of parenthood.

I could hardly wait.

Yet, I did stop and think of all of the stupid things I had done dealing with my love for Maddie during high school, and realised why it wasn’t her I was sharing this experience with.

My coffee date with Maddie became such a beautiful memory in my life – one of my favourites.

Not because I got to see her again after so many years, although that of course was a most wonderful part of that experience.

It is one of my favourites because that moment of reconnection signified the moment after which we never lost touch with each other ever again.

Even as I write this, it is more than 20 years ago that we shared a simple hour together, finding in each other the friendship we almost always had. There was no particularly reason why we ever disconnected in the first place – life just took us in different directions, and to different parts of the world.

It took only moments for everything to flood back – the mood was very much like it was at her 21st birthday party. Warm and friendly. Loving and close.

I think we both knew that even though there wasn’t any vibe or inclination towards any romantic relationship on this particular day, that now we were reconnected, we would always be a part of whatever life each of us would experience from now on.

We really have shared many special moments in our lives.

Several years later on the night that my son would be born – (that part of my story is coming soon) – Maddie would be one of the first people I told. My son was born quite close to midnight, and I sent a text message to each member of my family, and a text message to Maddie.

Yet Maddie was the first to respond.

She was over the moon for me. She knew that I had always wanted to be a father, and was just so pleased.

I was rather chuffed too, I must say.

That simple coffee date we shared cemented our friendship forever. Yet, while I would move on and soon start a family of my own, Maddie was never far from my heart.

It certainly was not the end of our story.

Almost exactly a year on from that horrible day, something quite unexpected happened.

I think the day was a Tuesday, and the previous Friday I had been made redundant from my job. Quite a disappointment as it was a job that I loved, but sometimes these things just happen. As such I was sitting back in my cosy little unit on this particular morning, getting on with updating my resume to hit the job trail.

Tapping away at the keys, I heard that little tone that says a new email had arrived. I didn’t look at it straight away as I was working my way through a thought and didn’t want to stop typing. In fact, I completely forgot about it for some hours.

I had made and drunk several coffees, had lunch, and even had a nice hot shower – before sitting back down and doing some more work on my resume. Before long I heard that “new mail” tone once again.

This time I looked straight away – and it was just a follow up email from one of the recruiters I was talking to in the hope of getting back to work. I read it, and answered it.

It was then I noticed the email that had arrived hours ago and to this point had completely forgotten about. A first glance it looked like a piece of spam email and I was just about to delete it when I took a second glance – and that’s when something caught my eye.

There was no full name listed as the sender – just the email address. Which started with an “m”, followed by two further initials that matched Maddie’s initials. I blinked and looked again, as that combination of letters was a common thread in my head, not just because they matched Maddie’s initials, but because I often used her three initials in computer passwords.

They were embedded in my head almost every day.

So I took a closer look, and without reading the content jumped straight to the sign off at the bottom which just said “Love, Maddie”.

I was pretty depressed that I had lost my job a few days earlier, but I forgot all about that and started reading her email. It was short, but made my day.

Probably my week, almost certainly my month, and absolutely my year.

It had been almost 8 years since I had seen her last – that fleeting moment on the road on Boxing Day. I’d also heard absolutely nothing about where she was, or what she was doing. I just ached to hear anything from her or about her for that entire time.

Her email quickly spoke about how she’d been away overseas, and that she had just come back to Australia because she really felt it was time to be back close to her family again after “going through some stuff.”

There was one mystery though – how did she find my email address? I wasn’t in the habit of using it publicly – (I had another throw away email address for signing up to websites and the like) – but this one was my “private” email address that almost nobody knew.

To this day I don’t know who gave it to her – a few mutual friends knew it, so I’m guessing it was one of them, but that question was never answered, and didn’t even come up.

Frankly, I didn’t care – Maddie had come looking for me and she had found me!

I replied back quickly, probably gushing with a massive smile, and before long the emails were bouncing backwards and forwards. It wasn’t a lot more than small talk to be honest, but she was coming to town the next week to do her own job hunting since getting back to Australia and she asked if I wanted to catch up for a coffee and a chat.

Are you kidding? Hell yes – just tell me where and when!

We quickly picked a time and a place, and it was entered proudly into my calendar – “Coffee Date with Maddie”.

The email chain carried on for the rest of the week, a couple of emails a day generally. I asked about what she’d been doing, and how married life was.

“I never got married, it fell apart pretty quickly,” was her response.

Hmm.

“I took off overseas to get away from the bullshit, and I’ve only just decided to come home. I had the shit scared out of me on September 11th last year.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“I was visiting New York with a friend because neither of us had ever been. September 11th was going to be our last day, and we’d left our luggage at the hotel after checking out to do a final few hours of sightseeing before flying out – and we thought the World Trade Center observation deck might be somewhere to get a few good photos.”

I’m reading the email completely wide eyed at this point.

“We jumped on a subway train to head towards the WTC, but the train stopped a couple of stops away from there, and everyone was told to get off because the trains were shutting down because of an incident at the WTC.”

“We emerged at street level and could see all the smoke spewing out of the building we were about to visit. We were literally just a few minutes from getting there. We saw the second plane hit, and we were terrified, like most people.”

“We thought we were far enough away, just a few blocks north, so we just stopped and watched in amazement of what we were seeing, and then the first tower to collapse came down. The cloud of dust started rushing between the buildings, and we just turned and ran. Ran and ran and ran back to our hotel. I don’t think we even looked back once.”

I think I left my body reading this – understanding how close Maddie came to perhaps being truly caught up in all that horror.

And then I remembered how I had felt while watching the events live that night.

“Gee, I hope Maddie is okay!” I thought on the night.

I had no idea that she was even overseas again, let alone in the US, let alone in New York.

Yet I had asked myself that night if she was okay, while watching it all unfold on television.

I replied to her email, still shaking. All I wanted to do was be close to her, and stay close to her always. I wanted to hold her and look after her after what she had been through.

“Maddie, can I tell you my story from that night?”

(UPDATED: I spoke to Maddie over Christmas – as we usually do – and I asked her about this again. Seems I mis-remembered the story a little bit. I had it in my mind they were only three or four blocks north of Ground Zero, but she said it was at least 10 or 11 blocks, so while they were scared and absolutely ran as fast as they could, they were in less danger than it might have seemed above – but the point of the story, that I thought of her that night – is absolutely still there!)

September 11, 2001 – a day anyone who was alive on that day will never forget.

I don’t want to minimise what happened that day for the many thousands of people who died or had their lives ripped apart, but events of that day had a major effect on me.

I just didn’t know it at the time.

In Australia, the events of 9/11 happened during the late evening, just before 11pm. I was in the habit of watching the late news on television – (usually around 10:30pm on the main channels) – and then going to bed.

On this night, I had fallen asleep on the couch, and slept through till around 11:15pm, by which time both planes had already struck the twin towers in New York.

Whatever channel I was watching hadn’t started their late news yet, so I flicked over hoping to catch some on one of the other channels. Where I was confronted by the tragic events of that day.

Stunning. Indescribable.

I had actually been home sick from work that day, and still wasn’t feeling very well and was planning to take the following day off work as well. As such, sitting up and watching this once in a lifetime “event” wasn’t going to upset any work plans for the next day.

I just sat and watched for two or three hours. I saw the towers fall, and the flames at the Pentagon.

Then my head did something really weird.

“Gee, I hope Maddie is okay,” I thought to myself.

Wait, what?

Why had that come to my mind? Why had Maddie popped in there? It had been nearly seven years since I had seen or heard from her.

More than a year later, I would get my answer.

I was in for yet more disappointment – and frankly, outright trauma.

Amber’s “family issue” was her getting back together with childhood sweetheart and future husband. I was really disappointed, but I thoroughly understood when she told me.

Her getting back with him would be like Maddie and I finding each other and finally getting together. He was the Maddie in her story. I understood, and was happy for her – and there was no way I would ever be able to compete with that anyway.

As I said last time, they are still together all these years later and have two beautiful daughters together. She and I are still good friends, and talk on Facebook from time to time. Amber is special to me because out of all the women who have passed through my heart, she is the only one other than Maddie who has respected my feelings, and done the right thing by me.

I hold Amber in very high regard.

The next woman to grab my attention was April, who I first met online. We just vibed with each other from the very beginning, and she was overtly flirty and even mildly sexual when we talked. Before long we got to talking on the phone, and meeting up for coffee one lunch time.

Instant attraction.

I wouldn’t say I was ever in love with her, but she was one of the kindest people who had ever touched my heart. She sent me flowers at work for my birthday. She would leave cheeky voicemails on my work phone during the night so I had a nice surprise when I got to my desk in the morning.

We talked about spending more time together – although she was studying and working, and finding time was difficult. Even so, it was a wonderfully exciting time.

Then one day, nothing. No messages online, no voicemails, no emails.

Nothing.

I asked a mutual online friend where she was.

“Oh, she got married, didn’t she tell you?”

No, no she didn’t.

I had to let those feelings slide away. She did finally one day pop up to apologise, an apology I accepted but made sure she knew she had really hurt me. She accepted she had done the wrong thing.

At least she was honest with me, albeit far later than she should have been.

Next came the most traumatic relationship of my life. So traumatic that in real life I do not speak her name, and I won’t even give her a fake name in this story. She doesn’t deserve one.

I was just getting over the shock of April when this new woman came into my life at a party I had been invited to by a friend. She was a strong personality who knew how to manipulate people into her circle of influence. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was to be her next victim.

She was a con-artist who I would later discover had a criminal history of duping men into relationships, bleeding them dry, fucking with their heads to the point of mental breakdown, and then throwing them aside when they were broke and no longer any use to her.

We were even engaged, and mere weeks away from the wedding when I finally found the courage to break away from her. She had taken just about everything I owned, and milked my finances before I even knew what was going on. Completely blindsided.

She pushed me to breaking point through mental, emotional and physical abuse. She even tried to stab me with a six-inch kitchen knife, and though I managed to disarm her in the midst of her psychotic rage, there are still several small scars on my hands from where the blade caught me during the struggle.

I came in with everything, but left with nothing – except my life and a psychological hole that took me a very long time and a lot of help from a psychologist to climb out of.

My friends and family banded around me, but I had a long journey ahead. Ironically, one of my best supports through this was April.

I moved back in with my parents while I got back on my feet, and about a year later I moved into a small unit in a quiet little suburb, tucked away in the corner of a new development where nobody could find me.

Very few people had the address.

I was tired and broken, and I needed time to heal – a lot of time. I had lived and loved so much in my life and had nothing to show for it.

But what I needed more, more than anything, was Maddie.

She would know how to fix me.

Life without Maddie around was a cold place.

There was no doubt whatsoever that we would still care for each other, but after that fleeting moment on Boxing Day, she just seemed to disappear. I didn’t know where she was, and that was scary to me – I always took great comfort that I knew where I could find her.

She had moved out of her parents home, I presume to live with her fiancé and get married and be happy.

I was absolutely over the moon for her, but I no longer had any kind of chance to win her heart, and it was an empty feeling.

Still, much like the previous time our worlds disconnected, I tried to move on without her. It was what she would have wanted me to do.

The difference was that last time, I thought I loved her – but this time I was sure that I loved her.

My final year of university started, and something was different. I don’t know if my resignation that Maddie was now completely out of my reach forever changed the way I carried myself, and how people saw me.

The whole vibe was different, and women seemed to be noticing me. That was absolutely terrifying as someone who still basically had zero confidence in himself.

There was an amazing girl named Amber at university who had been flirting with me a little the year before, but this year she came on a lot stronger. Frankly, she was gorgeous and we were already good friends. However, I absolutely wasn’t ready, and despite how nice the flirting with her felt – and new for me – I didn’t try and push it any further.

Amber and I are still good friends to this very day. She’s married to her childhood sweetheart and has a couple of kids with him.

Then there was Sarah. Sarah was a disaster for me.

It had been about six months since the coffee meetup with Maddie, and I felt I had healed a lot, and Sarah and I really did hit it off. My low confidence probably affected how this one worked out, but it was this experience that killed off my confidence around women, pretty much for good.

It took a lot of energy for me to ask Sarah on a date, but somehow I managed. I was nervous as hell, and she had recently broken up with a long-term boyfriend, a guy who had been cheating on her and being emotionally and mentally abusive to her. Definitely good reasons to break up with someone.

She wanted to go slow, and that was fine by me – slow was what I really needed anyway.

The first date was a train wreck. I was so nervous that I could barely interact, and she was so timid after her breakup that there was a lot of silence going on. Not good.

A few days later I called her and suggested we give it another go – it had been so bad because we were both so not ready for it, that going on another we would at least know each other and feel a lot less awkward.

She agreed, and the second date was massively better. We both relaxed, and actually enjoyed ourselves, I thought we were ready for a third date as it was so happy and friendly. My usual lack of confidence was there, but I was dealing with it okay.

I called about a week later to ask her out for another date. I couldn’t believe how well I was doing, and I couldn’t believe I had gotten past two dates with someone. I was so proud of myself.

“Sarah, any ideas where you’d like to go on another date?” was my almost-confident question. I had gotten a slight vibe that she wasn’t into it as much as I was, but I was so happy to try.

“Andrew, thanks for the good times we’ve had, but I’m just not feeling this going much further. I’m really sorry.”

That stung, but given I had a vibe she might turn me down, I wasn’t completely shocked, and had even prepared myself for it.

I was okay – my confidence took a bit of a hit – but I was okay. Disappointed, but okay – though that’s the moment she chose to kick my legs out from underneath me.

“Andrew, if I’m being honest…” she started.

At this point I went on red alert. It had ended on a friendly note, and I thought it was amazing that although it wasn’t going to go any further, that it had ended nicely for a change. There was nothing more she needed to say.

Say plenty more she did.

“…if I’m being honest, if I had a choice between starting something with you, staying single, or going back to my abusive ex, I would choose him first, staying single second, and you third.”

Bang.

An abusive arsehole was a better option than me. Being with nobody was a better option than me. Those things were more interesting to her than me – and even if that was exactly how she felt, there was no need to say it.

It utterly destroyed me. What confidence I had built up? Gone in an instant.

I gave up. I wasn’t interested anymore. I couldn’t have cared if I stayed single for the rest of my life. Maddie wasn’t an option – and everyone else, with the possible exception of Amber, had kicked me in the guts.

I finished university and moved to the big smoke for work – a time I had planned to be joining Shannon in a much closer relationship, but obviously that had long since fizzled. Curiously, I discovered Amber had become single – the only time in her life that she wasn’t with her childhood sweetheart.

She would come and visit from time to time, and although we were never officially together, we were getting there – slowly – but getting there.

She was coming up to see me one Saturday so I could escort her while she did some shopping – but it was just an excuse to spend time together.

On the Thursday before, she called and asked for a rain check – she had to head home to deal with a family issue, but we’d try again for the following weekend.

I had a dream about Maddie that night – it was about sharing that Saturday with Maddie instead of Amber. Everything we had planned, but it was Maddie instead of her, now that Amber wasn’t coming.

At the end of the dream I turned to Maddie and said, “Goodbye Maddie”.

Yes.

I said goodbye to Maddie.

It was a hard time for me.

I was sad, and in many ways depressed that Maddie had now seemingly slipped away from me forever, given she was getting married. It just seemed that she was completely out of reach now.

At the same time I also felt a little bit free. I had obviously always loved her, and probably always would.

Yet something always got in the way of us – and usually it was me that got in the way.

I was never against moving on with someone other than Maddie – the smattering of attempted and failed relationships I had been through told me internally that I could do that, but the disasters that most of those became always brought me back to her in the end.

So as sad and depressed as I was initially, I did feel better that all of those questions I needed to ask Maddie had finally been answered, albeit indirectly.

Could we ever be together? No, she’s getting married.

Did she love me? Yes, but not in that way, at least not any longer.

Could I move on? Yes, but I couldn’t see the path right now, and I needed to clear my head anyway.

I needed time to heal, yet I felt there would always be a connection between Maddie and myself.

My family would spend every Boxing Day with my mother’s family – in another nearby city. So we would all pile into the car and head that way from about mid-morning every year.

There’s a long straight stretch of road on the highway between the two cities, about five kilometres long, with a gentle curve at each end.

We rounded the bend, and briefly afterwards another car appeared at the far end, just rounding the bend about five kilometres away. There were no other cars visible in either direction.

Immediately I thought that it was Maddie, which was plainly stupid. How could I know that?

She was still on my mind, our coffee date being only a couple of weeks before, so I was probably just pining and wishing.

As the two cars got closer together, I got a little more curious. As the other car got closer, the pieces started to fall in to place.

It was the right colour.

It was the right make and model.

The two cars passed, and it absolutely was Maddie.

I was floored – there was no way I could have known it was her, but somehow I did know.

I knew in that moment that there would always be a connection between us. I was so in tune with her that I just knew it was her.

What I didn’t know was that brief moment was the last time I would see her for nearly another eight years.

And just how much would happen before then.