I collect stories about how people fall in love. Not deliberately, and until a short while ago I wasn't aware that I did. but I do. People seem to like to tell me them, perhaps knowing that I wont try and counter with an even more spectacular yarn of fate and destiny or perhaps just because I'm the latest to cross their path as they fumble with fat fingers to knit synthetic phrases into something warm, something watertight.

In the past few months, I've been getting together with other collectors in a local Harvester to swap tales. Most are in the same boat as me, perplexed but undeniable magnets for the newly in love. It may be merely fashion, but we've all noticed that there don't seem to be as many eyes across a crowded room type stories any more. Prevailing customs favour a more quirky, modern narrative, one that will make you stand out at anyones bi-monthly dinner party. My fellow enthusiasts see this as a good thing and can relate romantic encounters involving impromptu HP Sauce buying, faintly illegal manoeuvres by the soft toy mountain in a Disney Store and the night bus to Wood Green over the salad cart for hours. It's almost heresy in such circles to mention it, but I find such accounts a little too quirky, more annoying even than the traditional first sight stories which we all hold an unspoken but understood distain for. I favour the slow-burning ones, the understated histories that don't resonate with their own ironic self-awareness, but such talk runs high risk of discrediting yourself as a Kitchen Sinkist or a Despite Myselfer, so I keep quiet. I'd feel nervous about even mentioning my preference here but for the fact that when we meet we use pseudonyms from Audrey Hepburn films. A whimsy of the group's founders, Mr Varjak and Miss Golightly, I confess I'd never seen the point until a little while ago when the following story began to prod me awake at night, asking to be told.

She'd never expected to be invited to stay the night so she wasn't prepared. With the sex over and done by the early hours, she found herself with the much more nerve-wracking prospect of having to sleep next to him. Meeting properly for the first time just that evening, she hadn't even been sure it was a date until she found herself being kissed, and kissing back, and she'd snuck one finger into the waistband of her jeans to check the quality of her knickers before agreeing to go back. Feeling the offer of a t-shirt a little redundant now, she accepted anyway and curled up under the blankets, gaze fixed on the gap in the curtains leading out into the damp, greying morning. When he returned from the bathroom he crawled naked under the covers and folded his long body behind hers, knees and elbows and chin fitting neatly into her.

For the next hour she lay awake uneasily, uncomfortably aware of the weight enveloping her that she was sure she would have to disturb with an ache or a cramp soon. She tried to belay inevitable claustophobia by casting her eyes around the room for clues to the man beside her. Wardrobe, desk, drawers. No posters, pictures, photographs. She distracted herself for a further thirty minutes attempting to make out some titles of the books on his shelves, all the time aware of his breathing, soft and steady on the back of her neck, as she listened carefully for signs of wakefulness. By the time a thin rectangle of sunlight had begin to inch its way across the carpet, she had perfected in her head just the right kind of blithe, nonchalent tone of voice with which she could declare, when asked, that she had slept well, and wasn't it a beautiful day out? In her concentration she had not noticed that they were both still lying uncomplicatedly in the same position they'd started in six hours before.

It was his flatmate who eventually roused them, crashing in through the front door exhorting the flat to come and see him dance the polka. After the first startled flinch they uncoiled themselves slowly from each other, looking first to the door and then to the other. That both of them had forgotten to act sleepy surprised them for only the briefest of time.