"Wonder how the Prestatyn Rugby Club are getting on in Bakewell?"

"Well, being Bakewell, I expect they've found a couple more tarts to play with."

"But not one that can play the fiddle."

"Or two with 'voices like angels,'" Simone said, impersonating Gareth's elongated Welsh vowels. We descended the mountain and returned, wearily, to our camp. The conversation had dried up, and both of us were too emotionally drawn to put much effort into instigating anything new. It was a bittersweet conclusion to our weekend. We both felt, I sensed, that something essential had occurred, but each regretted its happening. Supper in the Nag's Head was a more muted affair than the previous evening, and after only a couple of drinks we returned to the campsite.

"Okay," said Simone, resting languidly on the rug beside me in the half-light of evening, "it's been a weekend of questions. And a few answers, as well, I think. One final question, though, and if you say no paseran I'm going to stick this can of lager up your arse."

"Okay," I laughed.

"Sideways."

"Alright, alright, ask away."

"Okay, what about this unrequited love of yours?"

"Once and forever? Still just the once, and still forever." I replied, guardedly.

"Have you done anything about it yet?"

I paused, looking down at the grass, reddish-brown in the dappled moonlight. "Not yet, no. But I'm hoping to. I'm hoping to, very soon."

Simone said nothing, and I looked up. She had me fixed in a curious gaze, and I thought she was about to speak. My heart was lurching in my chest, nerves jangling. When can I say something, I asked myself, repeatedly and frantically. When can I broach it? When is the right time? Is there a right time? I felt we had come so far in the course of the last two days, had grown so much closer, come to understand one another more fully. I saw in Simone a much more rounded person than the one with whom I had fallen in love. I had seen - been privileged to be shown - what lay behind her façade of cool, calm assurance. I had glimpsed the soul of the woman, and that glimpse had convinced me: I had never understood why I had become so besotted with her, but now I knew, now I felt the connection so strongly, now I realised that living without her would be impossible.

She remained silent, and her steady gaze unnerved me slightly. The evening air was cool, slightly damp, with a gentle wind rustling insistently in the trees above and behind; down at the bottom of the campsite there was light and bustle and activity, but here, here in our corner, our private realm, all was still, all was quiet. In the gathering gloom, Simone's features were melting into indistinction, and yet her presence felt more powerful by the second, the aura around her suffusing its warmth, reaching out to me. Scrabbling behind her, she felt for her flute and sat cross legged in front of me. She placed the flute gently to her lips. And started to play.

And the tune she played was Paddy Fahy's Reel.

Paddy Fahy's was the tune I heard whenever I thought of Simone. It was my tune for her, that perfect, unfathomable, never-ending piece of musical perfection which seemed to me to distil the very essence of Simone. Its haunting melody drifted through the cool evening, settling over the Peak, comforting, peaceful, contented. I could hear Simone's breath whispering beneath the tune as she blew into her flute, bringing life and spirit to the moment, to the music, to the mountain, to us. Her eyes were a million miles away, floating and soaring in the wake of the song, while her fingers danced across the metal instrument, stopping and opening its holes, creating their magic, concocting perfection. Happy and sad, hopeful and desparate, the tune turned and revolved, unresolved and unanswerable, and I reflected on the last, tumultuous week: how I had come close to losing Simone, but how that seemingly traumatic event had brought us closer together; how Simone's emotions had burst through her once impregnable shell of reserve, and how, once more, that helped bond us; how we had talked and talked, and cried and cried, listened and advised, consoled and cajoled; how we had grown to know one another; come, perhaps, in some small, cautious, circumspect way, to trust one another; and how, dare I suppose it, we had come to love one another?

A tear sprung from my eye as Simone continued to cycle through Paddy Fahy's. It was no use. Everything that had happened over the last week, every event, happy or sad, had only reinforced my one belief: that I loved Simone Clements. Loved in a way I scarcely understood, far beyond the lust and infatuation I had felt those months ago when I first saw her. Loved in a way which clawed at my heart, tore at my spirit, spat at my resolve. Loved in a violent, animalistic fashion. I became subsumed with tears, great wheezing snorts wracking through my body. Once and forever, I loved my love, once and forever I needed her, once and forever, once and forever. Visions flitted before my eyes: Simone on stage, alive and fizzing with energy, playing The Otter's Holt; skimming through the countryside of Rutland Water on her bike, with the wind billowing in her tee-shirt, shreiking with laughter, happy in the joy of living; then crying and bereft in Derby, years of hidden despair unleashed, a cavalcade of emotion, a wellspring bubbling up and bursting out, catching both of us unawares; and resolutely striding up the crags of the Peak District, and sounding out her fiddle in the Nag's Head, the focus, the centre of attention, everybody's darling; and finally, head in hands on the top of Mam Tor, wailing for lost innocence. I saw those things, and I saw my love, sitting opposite me, playing her ethereal air, playing the tune that was made for her, the tune that described her perfection. And at that moment I knew: I had to tell Simone.

Convulsed with tears, I bowed my head and prayed for courage, prayed for Paddy Fahy to give me strength. I felt Simone's arms around me, cradling me, stroking her hand down my cheek, patting my hair and pulling me to her bosom. I hadn't noticed her stop playing and, indeed, the music was still ringing in my ears, hanging in the air, achingly, permanently.

"What's wrong?" she said, tracing the line of my tears with her nail. "What's wrong?"

"Simone," I said, my voice cracking, "I have to say this now, or I don't think I ever will, and I couldn't bear that." I paused, and sniffed into a tissue. Looking up at her, I fixed her gaze in mine.

"Simone, I love you. I always have. I always will."

She said nothing, but continued to hold me. "I think I knew that. Once and forever?" she whispered.

I smiled and nodded. "Once and forever. You, my love, once and forever."

"Well, then, you'd better give me a kiss."

On to next story: Simone's diary, July 27th