She challenged me for a game of Scrabble. I did not refuse. How could I? It was like she was telling me – I want to have a word with you.

I was so ecstatic with that last line that it took my friends a full measure of five hours after school to convince me that ‘I don’t hate you’ was not, by any remotest possibility, equal to ‘I love you’.

Eight academically brilliant but romantically barren years, and then in a week’s time a sudden bloom like this.

I’d like you to dot my every ‘i’ and I’ll cross your every ‘t’. I love you. Will you marry me?