My job requires discretion and that is not a romantic quality

I work in a part of the civil service where my private life is a matter of formal record, and I am vetted about it at intervals by people who are polite and thorough. That is not a thrilling secret. It is an administrative fact that has shaped fourteen years of this and it rules out several things other people take for granted.

No photographs of me exist anywhere and none will. I do not attend anything with a guest list. I will not have my name written down beside anybody else's. This is not paranoia and it is not shame, it is the terms of employment I accepted at twenty three and have no intention of breaking at forty eight.

The west, fourteen years in, two long arrangements, the last of them six years and ended when she moved abroad for a post she had been chasing for a decade. We are still in touch and she would speak for me if the board worked that way.

What I want is exactly what I had. A private arrangement between two adults with rules that hold through the week, conducted at home rather than anywhere with a door policy. I am extremely reliable and extremely dull to anybody looking for a story.

What I cannot do is anything that produces a record. That includes photographs, that includes being introduced to a circle, and it includes the perfectly reasonable request to be told what I actually do, to which the answer will always be that I work for the government and it is boring.