My Colleague Saw Me In The Canteen While I Was On A Ferry In Another Country

The date is not in dispute. I have a boarding record, a payslip and a passport stamp.

On 14 March I was working, at sea, on a crossing, and I was — as anybody who has done that job will confirm — extremely, boringly, verifiably present in a place that is not a canteen in an office park.

On 14 March my colleague Anita sat opposite me in that canteen and had a conversation with me for about ten minutes.

She remembers it in detail. She says I had the soup. She says I complained about my back, which I do constantly, and she says I told her that her son should "do the apprenticeship, not the degree", which — and this is the thing that has hollowed me out — is exactly what I think, and exactly what I would have said, and what I had never said to her, because we were not close enough for me to say it.

Her son did the apprenticeship. He is doing very well. She thanked me at the Christmas party, in front of people, and I said "no problem" like a coward because by then I had already checked the dates and I did not know what else to do.

She is not lying. She has no reason to lie. She gains nothing. She is a sceptical, sarcastic, deeply unromantic woman who has, since this happened, refused to discuss it more than twice.

The second time she said: "You were wearing the grey fleece."

I own a grey fleece. I had it with me on the ferry. I have a photograph of me in it, on the deck, on 14 March, taken by a colleague, timestamped.

I have shown her the photograph.

She looked at it for a long time and she said, "Well, then somebody has your fleece."

And then she went back to work, and we have not spoken about it since, and we work eleven feet apart, and every so often I catch her looking at me the way you look at a door you are sure you locked.