York, where I grew up, is picturesque at any time, but at Christmas it’s stupidly charming: a Dickensian vision of twinkling lights strung across narrow paved streets. There’s the soaring gothic minster, pale and intricate as a prize-winning ice sculpture, bells ringing and choristers singing, and there are six homemade mince pies for £1 in the market. What could be nicer than to wander through the bustle, ending up in one of the city’s cosy pubs next to a crackling fire as the winter sun fades and the afternoon blue deepens into inky dusk punctuated with the first stars? It’s magical. Unless your first love is awkwardly, slowly, but surely, dumping you.
With hindsight, there had been warning signs, but I had chosen to ignore them. He was my first proper boyfriend and it had been a breathtaking courtship, heightened by a thrilling frisson of transgression: I was a 17-year-old student and he was in his early 20s, helping out at my school. We stopped short of having sex (just), but even so, as the mother of a 17-year-old myself now, I can see it was grimly inappropriate. At the time, though, it was the most romantic thing that had ever happened to me.
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