She was the prettiest girl in the school, right from the very first day.

Her blond hair shone like spun gold and her eyes were a piercing blue. The smallest of smiles from her perfect lips were enough to send any boy’s heart a flutter and mine did so on many occasions.

Though I’d seen her around the school several times, our paths first properly crossed when I’d been sent to the Headmaster’s office for a dressing down – for what offence, I really can’t remember. As I sat on one of the chairs outside his office -crapping myself and convinced my backside was about to be caned into oblivion – she came and sat next to me, having also been sent to “see the Head”. We exchanged a few words, as we wondered about our impending fate, but sat mainly in silence together.

I’ve always thought that that first meeting, under stressful and worrying circumstances, forged a tiny and tenuous bond between us. I never took it any further though and just continued to admire her from afar.

We were only eight.

In High School, we never mixed in the same circles: she hung out with the cool kids and I… well, I didn’t. And so I continued to fancy her from a distance.

I developed (pun intended) a keen interest in photography and in our last year at school, I opted to do ‘O’ Level photography at the local college. I was surprised and pleased when I turned up on the first day to find she was also on the course. We occasionally worked together and got on well with each other.

I remember one day, the two of us were alone together in the darkroom. I don’t mean the print processing room with the red light, but the film processing room which was proper dark. Black. It was totally lightless. But despite the dark, we knew exactly where everything was, obviously… how else would we develop the films? We also knew exactly where each of us were standing, which is why it was so obvious when I turned and rather clumsily bumped into her, ‘accidentally’ fumbling a quick grope of her knockers as I did so.

To my surprise, no slap round the face or verbal rebuke was forthcoming and I suddenly felt that, just possibly, we still had that slight connection that we’d forged together years before. Something told me that if I pursued it further, there and then, there was a real chance that I’d actually get further. Ask her out. Ask her out, for Godsake!

But, I was nerdy: I lacked confidence when it came to girls and I was swathed in teenage angst and acne, so I never followed it through. For a long time afterward, I cursed my shyness and awkwardness around the fairer sex and castigated myself over the possible missed opportunity of actually having this lovely creature on my arm.

Several years later, I’d taken the day off work and gone up to the NEC in Birmingham with my mate, Dave, for the annual motorbike show. As we wandered around looking at all the bikes, I suddenly heard someone calling my name. I turned around and there she was, looking as gorgeous as ever and sexy as fuck, wearing just a white two-piece bikini and high heel shoes, with a sash going diagonally across her ample chest and slim waist.

We chatted together for a short while, talking about what we’d done after leaving school – I was still following a career in electronics whilst she’d gone into modelling. This particular gig – dolly bird draping herself over motorcycles – was just a temporary assignment while her boyfiend/manager sorted out some proper modelling work for her. Or something. I forget.

Our chat over – she had work to do – I went back over to Dave, who’d stood several feet away to give us some privacy and whose mouth was still wide open in amazement. “How…? Where…? Who…? How the fuck do you know her?” he eventually spurted out.

“Oh her?” I said as nonchalantly as I could, “she’s the one that got away.”