I almost missed you.

I had one eye on the spaniel weaving through the poplars, its owner distracted by an oncoming cyclist, and the other on a heron poised on the towpath’s edge. It was that laugh, that explosive donkey’s bray, that brought me to a halt, transporting me instantly to another place, another life. Glancing across the water, I spotted a straggle of walkers, and at their head – where else? – a shock of flame-red hair, seemingly unburnished by time’s passing.

Aye, even after all these years, unmistakably you. Last seen – though neither of us knew it was the last – getting off the school bus three stops before mine, so cock-a-hoop your last A level was done and dusted that you lifted your shirt to give the boys an eyeful.

How many decades ago was that? Time’s a slippery customer these days. They say it’s fifty years since Abba won Eurovision, when everybody knows it was only yesterday. Sometimes, I lie awake, floating in space, looking down at the geography of my life. At the twists and turns that brought me across the water and led to Milton Keynes, wondering why this, how come that, if only the other. Observing with the benefit of hindsight how easy it is for people to drift apart. No shattering earthquakes. Just bridges weathered by relentless tides. How little we knew, our eighteen-year-old selves, about the effort it takes to keep things ticking over. Being an adult seemed straightforward compared to the pluperfect subjunctive.

Sometimes, I’ve wondered where you ended up, and imagined our meeting again. Would it be like falling into a favourite armchair? Or more like squirming in a dentist’s chair? At least now I knew how I’d react. I’d stand in the way of a spaniel, its owner, and a cyclist, speechless and gawping as you faded from view.

The heron’s screeching brings me out of my reverie. My legs automatically carry me over the bridge, past the cricket pitch, through Campbell Park. I think how unexceptionally the day had started: struggling to open the milk; proudly solving Wordle in three. Then, the crisp, bright morning, the swelling of buds and birdsong, the yellow dots of daffodils, all beckoned me to go out walking along the canal, to feel the sun on my face after a long dreary winter.

If I’d left later, I’d’ve missed you.

I still miss you. Miss the ‘you’ you were back then, at least. Who are you now? The person you dreamt of being? Am I? Should I have called out after you? How long have we been orbiting each other without realising? Maybe that fleeting glimpse was better than ending up disappointed. And yet, what if you still know me better than anyone?

I pause, as I always do when I go along the northern side, at the foot of the sculpture, craning my neck to follow the red steel figures balanced one on the other, each beginning where another ends, stretching up, up into the blue.