My job makes discretion an obligation rather than a preference

I teach. In a city where information travels the way it does here, that makes discretion a professional requirement rather than a personal preference, and it rules me out of the ordinary route into any of this.

Forty four, Didsbury, ten years in, none of it in any room with more than two people in it. No photographs of me exist anywhere in connection with this and none will. I do not attend anything. I will not be introduced to a circle. That is not shyness, it is the calculation any teacher in this city makes about their own life, and it is not open to negotiation by somebody who finds it inconvenient.

What that leaves is a private arrangement between two adults, conducted at home, known to nobody. Which is, as it happens, exactly what I want anyway. Standing duties, a structure that runs through the week, service that is practical, and a woman who is particular.

I am aware this makes me difficult to vouch for, in a city that runs on vouching. I have no answer to that except to be slow, consistent and easy to check in every other respect.

What I do not want is anybody who needs this to be visible in any degree, or who thinks the risk is romantic. It is not romantic. It is the reason I have done ten years of this almost entirely alone, and I would like that to change without the terms changing with it.