Neither of us spoke the other’s primary language, and we had spent only a short time in each other’s company.

At the time, there were constant stories in the newspapers about middle-aged women going on holiday and losing their hearts to good-looking young foreigners on the hunt for a European passport and a boosted bank account.
Such women had always seemed to me to be gullible and delusional. Why would a handsome young Moroccan hook up with a 40-something Brit, other than for some kind of material gain?

But, as far as I was concerned, none of these pitfalls applied to me.
Or was I being delusional, too? Perhaps we all believe we are the exception to the rule: that we are cleverer, prettier and wiser than the rest.

Abdel is a few years younger than me, and hardly represented a sensible choice of life partner for a 44-year-old career woman who was rising up the ladder in a profession in which she’d toiled for almost 20 years.

I loved my job as publishing director for a major London house, acquiring and editing authors, nurturing their careers and creating bestsellers.

I adored the cut and thrust of negotiating seven-figure contracts, and cherished the intimacy of crafting text with my writers.

And then there was my garden flat in London, which I had just finished renovating to my great satisfaction; I had friends and family I loved. My life was busy, and appeared successful.

But there was a void at the heart of it. There was no emotional core to my life. I had been single, out of choice, for some years — after the latest ill-judged liaison had come to grief, and I had decided, officially, to give up on the whole idea of men and relationships.

I had found that many men who are initially attracted to confident, independent women soon feel threatened by their success and confidence, and start either to try to under-cut or domesticate them.

I had seen friends trapped in marriages by controlling husbands, and I had had some experience of men who showed their insecurity in unnerving ways, such as phoning me a dozen times a day, hanging around outside the office and waiting outside bars where I was meeting my girlfriends – behaviour more suited to a stalker than a partner.