We can host easily, and it has never once been the hard part

There is a house, a driveway you cannot see from the road, no housemates, nobody within earshot and a spare room nobody uses. On this board that reads like the answer to everything, and four years have taught us it answers almost nothing.

Forty three and forty five, the western suburbs. Every real difficulty we have had has been social rather than practical. A man who turned out to drink with my brother's business partner. A man who told one friend, who told one friend. A man who was entirely decent and simply could not manage the drive twice a month once the weather turned.

So when people write leading with how convenient we must be, it lands slightly wrong. We are not short of a room. We are short of somebody whose life does not touch either of ours at any point, who will do the distance without turning it into a favour, and who can hold something private for two years rather than two months.

He is home for all of it and does the cooking, which sounds like a joke and is genuinely how the evenings run here. She is the one who decides. Both of us read every message that arrives and both of us reply. He is not performing ease, either. He is the one who suggested posting again this winter, and he keeps a list of the things we got wrong the last three times.

Not looking for a man who wants a base out this way for arrangements of his own, which has happened once. Not looking for anybody who cannot be specific about who in his life knows what.