MY first love was in my last year of primary school. Jacob Grace had stark blond hair and even starker blue eyes. Nearly every girl in the class was in love with him. Except the one he himself loved: Michelle Finch.

From my desk, I often gazed at Michelle in the front row. At the glossy black strands of her hair and her round-cheeked profile.

If only my cheeks were as rounded, as pink! If only my hair fell so thickly. If only I looked like Michelle. Then, Jacob Grace would love me.

Valentine’s Day was approaching. Blue Peter ran a piece on making a card for the one you loved. Making your own card showed devotion, they said. Far better than buying one from a shop, it was guaranteed to make the object of your affections love you back.

With this guarantee in mind, I drew a careful heart on a piece of card, cut around it, folded it in two, and covered the front in red felt.

Inside, I copied out a poem I found in a book of love poems on my mother’s shelves. In the space remaining, I drew a large question mark.

With a week to go, every night before I went to sleep, I took out the card, gazed at it, and imagined Jacob Grace receiving it.

For sure, he would think it the most beautiful of cards. And, by extension, me the most beautiful of girls.

On Valentine’s Day in our form, we were finally able to empty the red makeshift letterbox put in the classroom for us to fill with cards. Those who received any decorated their desks with them.

I looked over at Jacob’s desk. Towering, glossy affairs jostled for room. In the midst of them was mine.

Thumbprints of glue showed up under the fluorescent lights. The heart itself was not even.

At break, Jacob asked me if it was I who had sent the homemade card. In the panic of embarrassment, I denied it but my burning cheeks gave it away. My denial felt treacherous, even to the card itself. But despite his guessing, and Blue Peter’s guarantee, no hint of affection came for the rest of our time at school.

And so, long before I knew the word “unrequited”, I learned its meaning.

But it’s not only childhood that has such crushes.

At university, I fell in love with my literature tutor. Gabriel was dashing in a cream suit. He had fair curls and a shy, lopsided grin. And best of all, he knew everything about books.

Again, I was not alone in devotion. The place was brimming with girls in love with him. It was rumoured that one, a student called Olivia, had stalked him. She was in her final year. Dark haired and intense looking, it was said she was capable of terrible rages if you crossed her.

Gabriel seemed undaunted by all this and clearly enjoyed the attention. But despite hours of dissecting his comments in class and the way he might have looked at me, my patient friends and I found no indication he was remotely interested.

But finally, after four years of unrequited passion, fate appeared to have decided to bring us together.

As a post grad, I shared a rented house in Hampstead. The rooms were large, the garden generous. Soon after I moved in, I was on my way back from the shop and happened to turn around. A man was walking behind me.

Dashing in a cream suit. Fair curls ruffled by the breeze. I stopped. He looked up with a shy, lopsided grin. I gasped. It couldn’t be!

By an unimaginable coincidence, it transpired Gabriel lived in the street parallel to mine. Not only that but our gardens backed onto each other. He seemed unfazed – even amused – by the discovery.

Was it serendipitous, though? What if he thought I was another Olivia? A stalker? Heaven forbid. I was far too sophisticated for that. As we walked along together, to show him I, too, was unfazed, I chatted about books. And meanwhile luxuriated in the moments of our chance meeting. Stole glances at his face.

There was a loud crash. The world went black.

“Are you OK?” I heard.

For the first, and only, time I felt Gabriel’s hand on my arm.

The world came back into focus. My head thumped. Not a sophisticate but a cartoon, I had walked into a lamppost.

“Are you OK?”

He seemed to be gazing at my head. I laughed lightly. Goodness me, yes. And returned to the book talk. He looked at me oddly.

In the mirror at home, I saw the huge purple bump on my forehead.

So on Valentine’s Day spare a thought for the dreamers; for those who choose love doomed to be unrequited.