The emails continued, but only a sporadic few a week at first, and even then, a number of those dealt with the necessary evil of work. And then, suddenly in the middle of December, they stopped. I was a bit worried, because we'd been discussing an upcoming birthday of Caitlin's, and the last mail I'd sent was quite an expose on my experience of turning 30. It wasn't that it was morbid, or dealt with particularly difficult issues - it was just that I wasn't sure how she was feeling about the whole thing - some people find the prospect of a new decade very stressful. Caitlin had been moved to another building, which was a fifteen minute walk away from where I was. I didn't get to go over there very often, and the prospect of 'accidentally' bumping into her was remote. (Knowing Caitlin as I do now, I don't think it was anything at all to do with my mail, and probably everything to do with her huge workload.) Consequently, I thought that our brief encounter was over, but as we'd hardly spoken face-to-face, I didn't feel too badly about it.

2007
Christmas came and went, and January smartly followed suit. Then, one happy day early in February found me walking down the stationary escalator leaving her building. I was deep in thought when someone called out to me from the other escalator, and if I remember correctly, actually reached out and poked me as she passed. I looked up, surprised - I still didn't seem to know that many people in the area. It was, of course Caitlin, with a big smile. Her escalator was crowded with people, and as it was actually operational, she was being drawn away, inexorably upwards, away from me. I stared, smiling helplessly, only to realise ten minutes later that as my escalator had been broken (and empty), I could easily have walked back up with her at the same pace. As it was, we exchanged a minimum of pleasantries, big smiles and (in my case at least) a surge in heart rate, before I smiled my way back to my regular old office. God, her smile was amazing.

When I got to the office, I sent her an email right away, and she replied saying that she'd thought I'd left. Kathy had left over the Christmas period, and Caitlin had assumed that I had gone too. This was the start of our emails proper - there was never really a long gap after that one.

It was a really cold time of year, and the day after the escalator incident, we met for lunch. This was a huge deal for me. Caitlin had a meeting in my building, which was scheduled to finish around lunchtime, so we'd tentatively arranged to meet for a coffee. Ever hopeful, I nonchalantly suggested that we grab some lunch if it wasn't being provided for her meeting. She didn't reply, and so I was very surprised (not to mention plain scared) when she walked up to my desk at lunchtime and asked if I wanted to get some lunch. She looked as scared as I felt, but I interpreted the look to mean that she didn't really want lunch with me, and was just being polite. So, being the suave gentleman that I am, I suggested that we get a sandwich takeout from Starbucks, thinking that this may solve a two-fold problem, where Caitlin wouldn't have to spend too long with me when she didn't want to, and I wouldn't have to talk for too long (thus minimising the chances of making an idiot of myself). Almost as soon as the word "Starbucks" had left my mouth, I regretted it. I was in a beautiful city with this gorgeous woman who was willing to have lunch with me. What kind of a man was I? What if she were to take me up on the Starbucks offer? What if she thought I was a cheapskate, or that I wasn't interested in her? I'd always regret not taking her out for a proper lunch. Fortunately, Caitlin didn't seem too impressed with the Starbucks idea, and so we decided on just walking into the local shopping centre to see what took our fancy in terms of a sit-down meal.

Slippery Customers
It had snowed the night before, and the streets were covered in a thin, slippery layer of snow and slush. As we left the building, the heel of Caitlin's shoe got stuck in the door threshold, and her shoe actually came off, tipping Caitlin neatly forward and out through the door. She grabbed the door for support, and in that instant, she looked so vulnerable and pretty that it made me want to gather her up in my arms and just hold her. Instead, I smiled and pretended to be impatient as she freed the shoe, putting it back on with an embarrassed smile. And so we embarked on our maiden voyage together, across the slush. Caitlin slipped almost immediately, and grabbed my hand for support. For a few glorious seconds, we were holding hands. To me, it seemed both a nanosecond, and an eternity - my heart pounded, and I was aware of every beat, yet time seemed to stand still. I felt the soft, delicate warmth of her hand against the cold all around us - my senses on overdrive, becoming more aware of the sensation with each heartbeat. I never wanted to let her go. And we hadn't even started lunch yet.

Waga Whose?
After five minutes of walking through the mall, with me feeling alternately like a little boy, and a King, we reached Wagamamas, where we had decided that lunch would take place. We were soon seated, nestled tightly amongst complete strangers, sharing their elbow room, and being close enough to eat their lunch with one slip of a chopstick. Wagamamas was new to me, and I liked it.

As we sat and talked, my nervousness melted away. I found that Caitlin is wonderfully easy to talk to. She laughed when I made silly attempts at humour, and didn't laugh when I wasn't trying to be funny. She was intelligent, articulate, well travelled and seemed to have learned a lot more from life than I had. I felt a bit as if I'd cruised through life without noticing anything, and all the while she'd noticed everything. It was humbling for me, and yet she had no air of superiority. The surprising thing was that Caitlin seemed to be enjoying herself too.

The time came when we could procrastinate no more, and had to leave. As we stood on the escalator, Caitlin turned to me to talk. It was only a simple thing, but I couldn't remember any time before when I'd been on an escalator and someone had actually turned around properly to talk to me. As I was to discover, Caitlin is one of the most thoughtful and considerate people I have ever met. At the bottom of the escalator, we had to go our separate ways - each to our own building. We both searched for something to say, and I got there first with "Well, keep in touch"! I couldn't believe it. It sounded exactly as if we'd been on a date and I was giving her the brush-off, which couldn't have been further from the truth. I was appalled at myself, and Caitlin didn't look too happy about it either. I quickly added something else along the lines of "That was great - we'll have to do it again soon!", but I worried about it as I returned to the office. I'd had the best time I could remember in ages, and blown it right at the very end.

When I got back to the office, the first thing I did was to write an email thanking her for lunch, telling her that I enjoyed it, and that I'd definitely like to meet her again - for lunch, or indeed, anything. The wait for her reply seemed to take forever, but eventually she did reply, later that afternoon. And the reply was good.

The Setting
"This building's just been refurbished" Dean told me as we climbed the stairs. The stairwell looked as though it hadn't seen any attention for years, and Dean added "not that you'd ever notice" under his breath as though he'd sensed my thoughts. I grimaced and said nothing, preferring to make sure I knew the route we were taking - a precaution in case I needed to re-trace my steps quickly, should the building show signs of imminent collapse. When we had reached our floor, we traversed a narrow corridor towards a swipe card access-controlled door. Dean waved his card, a light flashed green, and Dean pushed the door, holding it open so that I could make it into the office too. I didn't know it then, but this was the office that would change my life.

An hour or so later, I'd been shown the kitchen, the medical room and the all-important room for natural breaks. Hands had been shaken, names and roles had been heard and instantly forgotten, smiles had been flashed, politically correct jokes had been told, sarcastic comments had been made, documents had been thrust into my hands, I'd been given my very own access token so that I could swipe into the office myself, and by this point, I was actually starting to feel as though these people thought I was someone special. Almost as if she could sense this, Claire - my new manager - showed me to my desk. It felt as though the area was specifically designed to take away any sense of specialty felt by its occupant. To my fore, there was a beautifully unobstructed view of the rear quarters of the local extra-large Laser printer. About twelve feet to my left and three to my right were matching six-foot partitions. Behind me was a window, which looked out onto another building over the entrance to the car-park, far below. Any hope of at least getting some fresh air was dashed as I realised that the windows had all had their handles removed. From that point onwards, it felt a bit like prison.

I was relieved when Kathy, a colleague from my regular office turned up. At last, here was someone familiar, with whom I could moan about the conditions of our confinement without the need to spend three months getting to know her first. And so, before I knew it, several days had passed, and we were getting quite settled. I had known Dean from work previously, and so we used to go for our twice-daily caffeine fix with Kathy and a couple of other people from our new team.

First Sight
One cloudy autumn day in 2006 found me at my desk, having just returned from such a trip. I was reviewing some actual paper documents, as my new laptop and email account hadn't yet materialised. The location of our paradise meant that we had a view of about twenty feet of wall (should I have made the effort to look around, or over, the printer). We learned about the people around us by observing them as they passed through our twenty-foot field of vision, on their way from one part of the office to another. On the day in question, I was reclining in my chair at rather a jaunty angle that just happened to afford me a clear view past the printer. I became aware of footsteps approaching, and caught sight of a tall female form in my peripheral vision. She was walking briskly and confidently, and she quickly came into focus. As a matter of fact, she came into focus from the feet upwards - such was the angle of my recline - and I was impressed, strangely enough, by the shapeliness of her ankles and calves. I realise that this probably makes me sound like some kind of pervert, but frankly, I don't care. (In my defense, her ankles and calves were accentuated by the heels and the just-below-the-knee cropped trousers she was wearing). As she came fully into view, I let my eyes take her in.

She was beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. She walked tall and erect, with her head held high, chin up, looking straight ahead. Her arms swung gracefully by her sides, and her demeanour exuded confidence. Her hair was long, sumptuous and dark. Its natural curls screamed "passionate" - the sort of hair in which you want to entwine your hand, the better to kiss its owner. Her face was pretty and soft and noble, capable, confident, elegant and proud. Her eyes were gentle, bordered by long, soft lashes, and she wore an expression of slight sadness that made me want to make her laugh, even if only once. I knew I could never do it though - knew I could never make her laugh. She was far too gorgeous to even realise my existence. I could picture her in nightclubs, being photographed by the Metro's "Guilty Pleasures" correspondent, and featuring in Hello magazine. I dismissed her as unreachable, and went back to my document.

Who's that girl?
Work must have been busy for her at that time. She walked past a few times a day, and eventually I could contain my curiosity no longer. "Who's that girl that keeps walking past our desks?" I asked Dean. "What girl's that then?" he asked, quite reasonably, as she was nowhere near us when I asked my question, and all the more reasonably since Dean didn't sit anywhere near us, and so had no idea as to who were the players of the "intermittent guest" role in our twenty-foot wall slot. "The tall pretty one." I replied, a bit lost for words to describe her. "She's - you know - really tall, and pretty. Long curly brown hair. I think she sits over there" I said, waving my hand in a vague manner that covered half of London. "Ah", he said in a knowing voice. "That's Caitlin. She's cool. I sung with her and Sarah in a karaoke once. I was smashed - it was mental!"

"Caitlin", I repeated thoughtfully. "Cheers mate".

Now that I knew her name, it seemed more likely that I would be able to make some kind of contact with her, even though I was still convinced that she wouldn't want to know me. I supposed that she must be harassed by hopeful men on a constant basis, and that all of them would be significantly better looking than I - a tall thin bloke in Pavarotti's suit.

One morning, I was sitting reviewing more paperwork when I sensed that someone was standing at the printer. I looked up abruptly from my document, and met the gaze of Caitlin. I don't think she was already looking at me - I think that my sudden movement had attracted her attention. Either way, I was staring wide-eyed and helpless, my brain incapable of finding something suitable to say. It arranged various unhelpful phrases at a leisurely pace, while I flapped, looking more stupid by the millisecond. Eventually, relief came with the arrival of a suitably benign greeting. "Hi" I snapped, my smile coming and going with the speed of a camera shutter. I dropped my gaze back to the paperwork with a look of studied attention, and held it there, frozen and glassy-eyed, until I sensed that Caitlin had gone. I let my features relax, my jaw dropping open almost to the floor. "Oh. My. God." I mouthed, to nobody in particular. Kathy giggled, a little excessively I felt. She knew all about my fascination for Caitlin. I was convinced that the episode had shown Caitlin that I was a complete fool, and that she'd never talk to me now.

All Talk
My chance to actually have a conversation with Caitlin came when she requested some work to be done by my team, and I was assigned the task. A few queries arose from the work, and naturally enough, I needed to talk to Caitlin to sort them out. So I sent her an email asking if she had time to discuss the issues, and when she confirmed that she had, I plucked up the courage to actually walk over there and talk to her. I don't normally have problems with confidence, but with her, I just couldn't do the small talk. I launched nervously into my little set of prepared questions about the work, stumbling sometimes over my words as I went. Caitlin listened patiently, and answered perfectly calmly and professionally. In fact, she was more than just professional. She was nice. Really nice. My vision of her as unreachable began to waver for the first time.

Humble Beginnings
A few weeks later, someone organized a trip to the local cinema to watch Borat. Even though I couldn't go, I had an idea that Caitlin might be going. I decided that at the very next opportunity, I would mail Caitlin to innocently ask if she'd been. The mail itself was a masterpiece:

Hi Caitlin :-)

  Did you see Borat?

Can you imagine my surprise and delight when she replied? Not only did she reply, but she asked me a question too!

Hi Dan, yep, I did indeed. Did you?

That brief exchange was the start of a torrent of emails that cemented our friendship. It's how we got to know each other, and how we used to waste each other's time when we should have been working. (It's how we still waste each other's time when we should be working.) For me, there are few more welcome sights than the bold "unread mail" indicator in Outlook, on the special folder reserved just for Caitlin's mails.

I am not the sort of girl who lives her life with any sense of danger. I don't do drugs, haven't shoplifted since 1991, haven't bungy jumped or snow boarded or jumped out of a plane or taken the day off to lie in bed all day with a lover. I've been doing the same corporate routine for eight years, in various cities and for various companies (same shit, different set). I go in, take on far too much work because I lack the assertiveness to say no, drown in work, feel sorry for myself, and lap up all the accolades when my bosses thank me for sacrificing all the extra hours. (Last Christmas Eve I arrived in Sydney after 24 hours in the air, went home to my mum's place, logged on and worked til 4.30a.m. That's typical of me. I procrastinate for England but then I always pull out the stops and do the right thing, the safe thing, the conscientious thing.)

Then I met Daniel. Daniel told me I wouldn't lie on my death bed and wished I'd worked harder on the progamme, produced more documents, updated more spreadsheets. I'd lie there and wished I'd skived off to Hampstead Heath on sunny afternoons more often. He encouraged me to live in the moment, he sent me photos of himself posing as a mannequin in the window at Gap, he told me the weather was fine outside and we should eat in the sun down by the quay, and that it really was ok to take an hour off for lunch. Or three, for that matter.

So we did, although by the time I was ready to be reckless and give in to him, the sun had gone and London was misty and damp with late summer rain. We met by the National Portrait Gallery on a Friday morning. It wasn't open. That didn't matter. We ended up at the Trocadero, playing air hockey and taking photos of ourselves and having dance-offs like we were 15. It was one of the best mornings of my life.

Why we're blogging
I want to share this blog with Dan not just because I want to record the events of the past year, but because I want us to continue being part of each other's lives, to share something small together now that we are separated by our circumstances and our commitments.

Dan's married and has a life and a persona and a world I don't know a whole lot about, in Wales. It's not like it sounds (and I know how it sounds, because I made the mistake once of mentioning him to my girlfriends). We didn't sleep together, but our souls connected. I met him in the office, in a grotty old former warehouse down by West India Quay, in London's Docklands. In our wharf. He was my physical ideal (tall dark and gorgeous) so of course I noticed him, but I also noticed his wedding ring, and respected it, and dismissed him, even while I noticed him watching me and blushing around me and shaking when he sat down with me to run through some work.

Actually, I loved him for all of those things but it was an innocent and distant feeling - I would never go near another woman's husband. But it's impossible not to feel flattered when someone blushes in your presence.

Still, he emailed me once, and we got to writing. We wrote reams and reams of emails to each other, and that's how we got to know each other. He made me laugh out loud at my desk, he encouraged me to live in the moment for once in my life, and he liked me. He said something to me not so long ago that made me realise how important I was to him.

He said there had been three significant women in his life (other than blood relatives). His first lover, who'd broken his heart when she turned out to be a lesbian. His wife (of 12 years Dan?). And me. In 34 years, only three.

Knowing Dan has changed my life. It's reminded me that life is complicated, and that we have a lot of impossible choices to make. That it's crazy, and beautiful, and fragile, and is full of moments that you will remember forever but that these moments don't come along very often, and there really aren't that many people out there in the world with whom we truly, properly connect. There aren't many people you'll meet in your whole life who will adore you, not because they're supposed to but because they just do.

Tamed Hearts
When I was in my final year of high school, I watched a film called Untamed Heart. I haven't seen it in 14 years and I have a bad memory for films but I remembered this from the film: Marisa Tomei's character walks home every night after work and Christian Slater's character follows her from a safe distance every night, without her knowledge, just to make sure she gets home safely. One night she gets attacked by a gang of thugs and he is able to rescue her. As an awkward 16 year old girl growing up in small town Australia I remembered thinking that was the most romantic thing I'd ever seen and wondered if anyone would ever follow me home to make sure *I* made it home ok. Nobody ever did. Until last week, the last time I saw Dan. I had a knee injury and even though I shouldn't have been out socialising when I was struggling to get around on my crutches, I wasn't going to miss out on seeing Dan for what will be the last time in a long time. So we met up at a bar in Fulham, near where I live in south west London. We said goodbye out the front and I hugged him. Then I hobbled away, ungracefully, and he went towards the underground. By the I time I'd finally made it to the crosswalk, crossed the road and turned into my street, Dan called out from ten yards behind me. He told me later that he'd have walked me home but didn't think I'd want to be seen with him in my street (I now have a boyfriend who lives with me). He told me on the night that he'd followed from a safe distance to make sure I was ok, but hadn't wanted me to see him in case I'd thought he was stalking me. It was my Untamed Heart moment - that moment when you realise that someone adores you. Above and beyond circumstance and possibility, with full knowledge that you can't have somebody you want to be with and who wants to be with you, that feeling alone is so rare and special that the rest of it doesn't matter.

I told him too, when he caught me up, that I'd never feel unloved again because of him. And I won't. One of our earlier conversations on MSN was me having a self-indulgent moan about the fact that nobody would ever love me (just because I'd had my heart bruised by a waste of space that we'd both worked with). Part of me is still the 16 year old girl that thinks nobody will ever love her, and that only the beautiful people know that feeling. But it was a moment of clarity for me, realising that I had found someone who thought I *was* beautiful, even on crutches.

So even though I know I can never have him, I'll always carry him with me, in my heart and my thoughts, until I'm lying on my deathbed thinking about all those wasted afternoons where I should have skived off to Hampstead Heath. And we'll always have our blog, to remind us in years to come of how we got to where we are now.