There are two things that you should know about my new story, before I begin. 1) in an attempt to differentiate from my previous Tom/Sybil universes, I wanted to have them living away from London. It is commonly suggested that you should 'write what you know', so I hope you will forgive my self-indulgence in basing them in Wales. 2) for the purposes of this storyline, they need to be the same age and therefore, Sybil at least is a little older than usual.

I am going to attempt to post weekly, each Thursday. As always, your opinions are very gratefully received!

It had all been Gwen's idea anyway. When Sybil subsequently considered the origins of their relationship, she was certain that she would never have even entertained the idea of searching for him. If it had not been for Gwen's period of reflection in the weeks prior to her marriage, they would not have met again and he would have remained wholly unassailable within her memory.

The two women were enjoying a mid-week evening out in a newly opened bar on The Hayes in central Cardiff, clutching auspiciously large glasses of wine and discussing with animation the final details of Gwen's forthcoming wedding to Jonathan. Gwen was no 'Brideszilla' and had been relatively restrained with her planning and preparation, but with the date now less than a month away, the minutia were preying on her mind and she was pleased to have an opportunity to share the tribulations of seating plans with her close friend.

"I can't put my cousin Gareth on the same table as my other cousin, Rob because they had some massive fight two years ago and haven't spoken since. But their mothers are both my Dad's sisters and are staying well out of it so they'd probably like to be next to one another. And then as you know, Jonathan's brother, Ieuan used to go out with Rosie so that's really awkward too. She cheated on him two years ago and even though he's supposedly happy with someone else now, if he's on the beers then he's likely to go off on one after a while, so we've got to keep them apart."

Sybil raised her eyebrows at her friend's explanations, offering a silent tribute to her largely genial family, although in truth it was generally wise to place some distance between Granny and Isobel. "Wow, it's certainly complicated!"

"I know, sorry to drone on about it but it's doing my head in! It's our wedding, why can't they all just smile through gritted teeth and get on with it?"

"They probably will on the day" Sybil reassured, smiling as Gwen shook her head ruefully.

"Not once the drinks start flying, you know what the Welsh are like!"

"It's feast or famine!" Sybil declared with a grin.

"And if someone else is paying, then it's a feast day!" Gwen raised her glass. "Iechyd da!"

Sybil echoed her words, leaning forward to tap her friend's glass with a gentle clink. She had lived in Cardiff for almost five years now, after having secured a position at the prestigious Velindre Hospital, specialising in critical cancer care. The move had meant both a promotion from her previous post at the Royal Marsden in Surrey, as well as a welcome opportunity to escape the ghosts of a failed relationship during her tenure there. She and Gwen had bonded immediately on their ward and Sybil's more senior position had provided no barrier to a firm and long-lasting friendship. Initially they had both been single and shared many fun and often riotous nights out, falling in and out of love with a succession of eligible or more often than not, unsuitable men, before dissecting each relationship with a wry sense of retrospection and humour.

Two years previously, each had seemed happily settled – Gwen with Jonathan, a rugby playing friend of a colleague, who had recently returned home after three years in Australia, Sybil with Damian, a nurse at The Heath who she had met on a training course. However the traits which Sybil had found so endearing at the start of their liaison – a self-satisfied sniff when concluding an amusing comment, his blithe indifference to time-keeping, the frequently cited quotations of Jack Bauer – eventually created such intense irritation that she could no longer appreciate his finer qualities and had therefore called time on their relationship six months earlier. Gwen and Jonathan shared no similar issues of division, however and his proposal after only fifteen months together had been accepted without hesitation.

"So what does Jonathan think of these table plan vexations, then?" Sybil asked with a smile. "Shouldn't it be a joint dilemma?"

Gwen rolled her eyes while simultaneously smiling With affection at the thought of her fiancé. "Oh he's hopeless!" she declared. "He just says 'oh do whatever's going to make you happy sweetheart, don't stress over it.' Honestly, he shies away from conflict at any opportunity – apart from on the rugby pitch of course."

Sybil frowned. "Is that something you should be concerned about, do you think? I mean, I'm not suggesting that you evaluate your entire relationship, but it's not fair to pass every difficult decision your way."

"Oh I don't mind!" her friend replied cheerfully. "It means that he never really denies me anything! If I feel strongly enough about an issue, he always lets me win. I'll get to make all the big decisions in life – where we live, how many children we have, what they're called – because ultimately he doesn't want to have an argument, so that suits me fine!"

Sybil laughed, while inwardly reflecting that she wouldn't be satisfied with a similar situation. She wanted somebody with whom she could debate and exchange opinions, not an appeaser who would allow her victory regardless of her beliefs. On the other hand, she considered drily, perhaps that was the reason that she found herself once again single at thirty three, while most of her friends and contemporaries, not to mention both of her sisters, were contentedly settled. Nevertheless, she had never been one to accept second best and was adamant that she would prefer to remain alone rather than compromise her values and principles. There were plenty of advantages to living by oneself and she enjoyed the freedom and spontaneity which her current lifestyle allowed.

Gwen interrupted her reverie with a rueful sigh. "It does make you think though."

"What does?" Sybil replied as she took another sip of wine.

"Getting married. I mean, I'm madly in love with him of course and I can't imagine being with anyone else ever again, but I'm sure everyone thinks like that, don't they? But they don't all work out, things do go wrong and so how can you really know?"

"God, you're asking the wrong person here!" Sybil joked. "I've never even managed a two year anniversary, never mind a lifetime of devotion!"

Gwen didn't appear to be concentrating on her friend's reply, she was still gazing at the wall behind Sybil's head, her finger running gently along the rim of her glass. "I've found myself looking back quite a bit. Thinking about William and whether it could have ever worked out in the long run. I mean, once upon a time I thought that I'd marry him and then I changed my mind. How do I know it won't happen again?"

Sybil's head jerked back involuntarily in surprise. "This is the William that didn't want to ever leave the Rhondda Valley, right? Who thought that coming into Cardiff for an evening out was taking a walk on the wild side? Who couldn't see the point in you going to uni to become a nurse because you'd be at home with the kids soon enough and it would all be a waste, so you might as well be an auxiliary up until then?"

"Um yes... But he was very sweet really, I don't think it's very fair to only concentrate on that…"

"The man you described as so safe, he made Richard and Judy look reckless and irresponsible!"

"Well they did leave Channel 4 while still at the height of their success, but I see what you mean, Sybil – fair play."

"You're mad to even consider that he might have made you happy in the long run!"

"I know!" Gwen sighed wistfully. "But he was my first love and he'll always be special."

"He's allowed to remain special. Put him in a little mental box labelled 'Special Memories', then slap a few of the more annoying recollections around the outside and shove it to the back of your brain. Long lost loves have a danger of twisting your grasp on reality, they need to be handled with a large degree of caution…" Sybil nodded at Gwen's now empty wine glass "…and never while drinking! Now I'll buy you another if you promise to stop talking like this, otherwise I'm putting you on the train back to Pontypridd!"

"I live in Radyr now, I've escaped the Valleys!" Gwen replied with hint of sarcasm and Sybil laughed.

"I know, but you wouldn't have done if you were married to William. You'd be living three doors down from his Dad, like he and his wife do."

"That's true enough. But don't you ever look back at your first love, Syb? Who was it, that Larry who you said you went out with in the sixth form? Don't you ever even consider where life might have taken you if you'd stayed with him?"

Sybil pulled a face and shook her head. "Well my Dad tells me that he's a high flying banker in London now and you know what that rhymes with! Either I'd feel insignificant in comparison on my NHS salary, or would be bored shitless as his trophy wife – a life filled with low calorie lunches, regular blow dries and endless abdominal crunches in my efforts to restrain him from straying – no thank you. Now, last drink?"

Gwen nodded and Sybil went up to the bar. It wasn't busy on a midweek evening, there was no comparison to the noise and high energy created by the crowds who spilled out from the trains and suburbs into the city centre each weekend. However, for those bound by shift work, a Tuesday night could be treated as the equivalent of a Saturday and Sybil had nothing to get up for in the morning except a visit to the Post Office, a potential run around Roath Park and her boxset of 'Breaking Bad'.

"Anyway…" she continued on her return, placing a fresh glass in front of her friend. "Larry was my first proper boyfriend, but he wasn't my first love."

Gwen's position shifted in her chair with interest. "Ooooh, that sounds intriguing - tell me more!"

"My first love…" Sybil paused for dramatic effect, her hand resting on her heart. "…was a boy called Tom who was in my class in Year 8 and 9. I lusted fruitlessly after him for two years, wrote his name endlessly in my diary, secretly planned our future and finally…" she waved her hand around with a grin. "…snogged him at the end of year disco when I was fourteen!"

"And then what happened?" Gwen was leaning forward with anticipation, her eyes displaying a mixture of excitement and light intoxication.

Sybil sighed, dropping her head with mock disappointment. "His family decided to move back to Ireland, where he was originally from. So he left and I never saw him again."

"Aww…" Gwen provided the appropriate audible accompaniment. "Did you not get his address or anything?"

Suddenly Sybil dropped her head into her hands. "It was tragic!" she laughed. "He came up to me on the last day of term. His parents had just sprung this move on him and his brother with no warning. Apparently, they didn't want them to fuss about it, so they only told them the day before they were going to finish school. We'd had the end of year disco on the Wednesday, then on the Thursday he'd even asked me if I'd like to go to the cinema with him in the holidays and then suddenly he was telling me that actually, he was moving back to Dublin next week so we couldn't do that after all, but we could write if I would like to?"

"And?"

"So he wrote down his grandparents' address and then the bell rang so I never got a chance to write mine down. Then I don't know what happened but I walked from school to the bus stop with my friend Anna, got the bus home as normal with my sisters, rushed upstairs to put his address in my diary…" Sybil waved her hands around in the air theatrically. "…I mean by this point in my mind, it was just a matter of time until I moved to Dublin! Clearly we were meant to be together! And I opened my bag and the address had gone! To this day, I don't know what happened, I guess it fell out at some point. I was distraught."

"I bet!"

"In fact, I had a complete paddy – burst into tears! My sisters both heard me and came rushing in. Edith was utterly unsympathetic and told me that I was ridiculous to get so upset about a silly boy, but Mary was surprisingly understanding. I mean, she was in the sixth form by then, so I guess she'd been through all those teenage crushes and could empathise a little. She'd just passed her driving test so she persuaded Mum to let her drive me back into Ripon and then we re-trod my route from school to the bus stop in an attempt to find it, but no luck."

Sybil tipped her head to one side, sticking out her lower lip in an effort to make her friend laugh. "And that was that! Teenagers didn't have personal email addresses or mobile phones back then, in fact I'm pretty sure that our parents didn't either at that point, so I had no other way of getting in touch with him."

"Didn't anybody else get his address?"

Sybil shrugged. "There was no way that I was going to ask one of the other boys if they had it, they'd have teased me mercilessly about fancying him. Our snog had been very discreet and in a corridor, so none of them knew that I liked him. Anyway, boys are hopeless at keeping in touch, I scarcely heard him ever mentioned again."

"He might have been equally heartbroken on the other side of the Irish Sea, pining for the girl who had forgotten him!"

"I doubt it!" laughed Sybil. "He could have written to me if he'd wanted to, everyone knew where I lived."

Gwen nodded. Although generally reticent in disclosing facts about her family's position, Sybil had shared the details once their friendship was firmly established, also confessing her official title – Lady Sybil Crawley – and Gwen had now twice visited the family's impressive ancestral seat in Yorkshire.

"So do you know what he's doing now?"

"No idea."

"Have you never even thought to look?" Gwen narrowed her eyes in disbelief.

"You know I don't…."

"…I know you don't do Facebook and all that, I understand your reasons, but have you never even tried to Google him?"

Sybil shook her head smiling. "It's never crossed my mind to be honest. Look, I haven't even thought about him for years, it was only you going on about your first love and presuming that mine was Larry. It just suddenly occurred to me up at the bar that I was mad about Tom for ages so technically, he was my first big love."

Gwen reached below the table and drew out her phone.

"What was his surname?"

"Branson. Hang on, what are you doing?!"

"Just curious, that's all. You don't have to look if you don't want to but that doesn't mean that I can't! What did you say – Branston like the pickle, or Branson like Sir Richard?"

Sybil couldn't help a sense of curiosity, despite her instinctive reluctance to pursue the enquiry. A combination of press intrusion after their father's affair ten years earlier and the teenage bullying which had sent their cousin Rose into a spiral of anorexia and an attempted suicide, had left all three Crawley sisters opposed to any form of social media and Sybil in particular had made substantial efforts to retain her privacy in all forms.

"Tom Branson…" Gwen was squinting at her phone, as her finger tapped away. "…oh bugger, there's loads of them. Um…I'm just looking for Irish ones then…lots in America…Melbourne…Portsmouth…London…oh hang on, Galway." She pressed the screen and responded with an expression of distaste. "Oh that can't be him, surely? He looks about fifty!" Sybil leaned forward to stare at the outstretched handset, then shook her head with a grin.

"Definitely not, no."

"Um…come on, where are you? A-ha! Dublin, here we are! Oooh Syb, he's lush, is that him?"

At only a brief glimpse of the photograph, Sybil felt a light shiver pass through her body, astonished to witness the once familiar features of a boy who had grown into a man. "Oh my God…" she said softly and her voice possessed an ethereal quality, as if reality was temporarily suspended. "…he doesn't look any different."

Gwen turned the phone around for another look. "Really, is that definitely him?"

"Definitely." Sybil replied, clearing her throat in an attempt to sound less unnerved. "He just looks a bit older, that's all. I'd recognise those blue eyes and that smile anywhere. Does it say what he does?"

Gwen tapped with her finger and then sat still. "Let's have a look at his privacy settings….mmm he's got them pretty tightly set, but dear God Almighty, Sybil – it's fate!"

"What is? What do you mean?"

Slowly, Gwen twisted her phone within her grasp so that Sybil could once again read its screen. "He might come from Dublin originally, but look where he's living and working now!"

"Swansea" Sybil read slowly with surprise, raising her eyes to meet the excited gaze of her friend.

"Less than an hour away, Syb. It's meant to be!"

Suddenly Sybil felt uncomfortable at the way the conversation was heading and made the abrupt decision to bring it swiftly to an end.

"Oh for goodness sake, he's probably married with three kids, don't be so ridiculous! Right, we've had our fun and satisfied our curiosity. Come on, what time's your bus?"

"Why don't you at least contact him to say hi?" Gwen asked with a suspiciously sly grin. "I'm not suggesting that you email him with a proposal, but just drop him a line and say hi, saw you're in Swansea, how's life treating you?"

"I'm not joining Facebook just to send some teenage crush a half-baked message to let him know that I've been cyber stalking him. I've got a sense of pride!"

"I'm not suggesting that you join Facebook and anyway, one glance at his profile is hardly cyber-stalking! Honestly, everyone looks up their old friends and lovers on the internet. I'm telling you Syb, you're in the minority here. I bet he's done it. In fact, he's probably looked you up and been disappointed that you don't have a profile. I bet he thinks that you've dropped off the face of the earth!"

"I'm sure he's got much better things to do with his time." Sybil's mouth dropped open as she witnessed Gwen once again tapping at her phone. "Now what are you doing?"

"Just googling him!" her friend replied, looking intently at the screen. "Yep! Got him."

Sybil observed silently as her friend continued to study her handset in detail, nodding solemnly and twisting her mouth into a smile.

"There!" Gwen declared. "I know all about him!" She pulled a face. "Professionally, at least. Nothing about his private life, unfortunately. He works at the university, looks as if he's done very well for himself. There's even an email address." She gave a sly smirk and lay down her challenge.

"I'll leave it up to you."