If loneliness was a choice, what was the other option? To settle for second-best and try to be happy with that? And was that fair to the person you settled for?

It was the first time she had ever felt the kind of loneliness that couldn't be cured with just any available company.

She had always maintained a cynical facade, using it as a defence against embarrassment, fear, loneliness… but at the moment she felt unusually vulnerable.

When the pace of our feet matched perfectly, I felt a deep inner pang of satisfaction. I could have gone on walking like that forever, side by side with him. There had been few times in my life I had ever inhabited a moment so fully, with no loneliness lurking at the edges.