She can not for the life of her remember who started talking first.

She casts her mind back to that time, when she felt alive and could feel the blood rushing around her body, but decides that it is irrelevant who started it, because from that moment they both discovered that they could talk to each other with such an ease that it was as if they forgot themselves.

Accustomed to long hours at work, they would both find themselves counting the hours down during the day so that they could rush back, immune to the usual stress of the rumpled suits, the contorted bodies packed like sardines in a tin, the huffing and puffing and tutting of the daily commute. One of them would invariably turn up with a bottle of wine and they would talk for a mini eternity, often until the small hours of the morning. No subject was off limits, nothing seemed awkward and like some quirky treasure seekers they would turn every stone to discover every last morsel.

Reluctantly, at four or five in the morning they would leave each other in some small vain attempt to catch a couple of hours sleep before work began. Then they’d find themselves in front of their pcs, thinking up new subjects to discuss, wondering what the other was doing, watching the tortuously slow revolutions of the second hand. Until finally they would be free to start their ritual again.

It has been a few years since then and she still can’t help but smile when she reminisces. And even though time and circumstance have separated them, they both know that they can still talk like they used to, tirelessly, no holds barred and with abandon.

Still, deep down she knows that it is inevitable that this will change, that yet more circumstance and human intervention has already put a time limit on this, one which is out of their hands. But she likes to cling to what they've got for now, because not having this in her life just doesn’t bear thinking about.

She often wonders how things would be if they had made a different choice. If they had been chancers and thrown caution to the wind. But just as soon as this thought enters her head its destructive nature kills it like a lysosome – an occupational hazard perhaps – and it is quickly replaced with something else. Yes, she remembers now that she needs to tell him about this funny thing which happened today because like her, he would find it hysterical…

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