We stumbled into the first building that offered shelter on that day, Dingy and delapidated, it was as perfect a stage as any for that moment in our love story.

My darling and I, we were both panting and choking with laughter from our mad sprint for shelter; sodden and grasping onto one another with the constant need for more that came with an all-consuming, fledgeling love.

Our shelter turned out to be the abandoned waiting room of some forgotten railway station, just a blip along the line between more important stops.

Now the rust-speckled tracks leading to it were choked with weeds and vines, and the building itself had great holes collapsed in its ceiling where the gloom and drizzle peeked and pattered in.

In its finer days the room was surely big enough to seat a dozen people at a squeeze. Now one of the benches had rotted clean through and lay discarded to the side. Cracked and peeling paint on the walls, a bleached and brittle train timetable still plastered to one, and a tangle of half-hearted grifitti as illegible as a doctor’s sign off. It was cold, too.

Still, my darling sat on the very center of the bench at the back, as if he were a king and this his throne room. His oversized winter coat draped itself along the worn wood on either side of him and he spread his arms wide to me, grinning. Come, my darling, he said. This coat is big enough for the two of us, and dry inside.

And it was. I forgot the cold and wet and drowned in his arms and his smile just as the rain drowned the world outside.

In our hideaway we speculated on lovers who had sat in this room just as we, perhaps torn apart by the arrival of a train. How were we to know? They had left no memory of themselves in this forgotten room. We talked of our dreams, too, and nothing seemed too much or forbidden to us in the innocence of the moment.

In the aftermath of the rain, I stood by the entrance and looked out at the sun painting everything in gold, while my darling found a battered can of spray paint in a corner.

We shouldn’t leave this place lonely, he said, rattling the can. We should leave it with a memory of us for all of its days.

And so this he sprayed on the wall, with no great ceremony: We were in love here. Just that.

Then we threaded our fingers, elated and light, and we stepped out into the sunshine.