She suggested I spend some time in Pattaya alone. I didn't know it was a test, and I failed it.

I'm South African, was 54 at the time, divorced for a good while and no kids, and back in 2019 I was at home one ordinary evening browsing a dating site more out of boredom than any real hope of finding something, when I came across the profile of a woman who'd just signed up that same week.

We started chatting almost every day, long messages about our lives, our work, nothing too important, and within a few days her profile had vanished completely from the site. When I asked what had happened she said she'd deleted it herself, that she didn't need it anymore. I took that as a good sign, maybe a silly thing to think looking back now, but that's how it felt at the time, like it meant she was serious. Her name was Noi, 32 years old.

When I got to Thailand we met near Khao San Road, in Bangkok, at a small café with tables out on the pavement where you could watch backpackers stream past with their huge rucksacks and colourful bracelets. I turned up a bit nervous, not quite sure what to expect from someone I'd only ever spoken to on a screen, but the moment I saw her walking through the crowd I knew the flight had been worth it. She'd had a pretty good life before me, a university education, a decent, respectable family in Bangkok, and had run a business for several years with her Thai boyfriend from university.

The business collapsed through mismanaged money, decisions she hadn't made but ended up paying for regardless, and he'd had girls on the side throughout the whole relationship, something she pieced together slowly, one suspicious message after another, until she couldn't keep pretending not to know. She'd lost pretty much everything she had, savings, a fair bit of dignity, and several years of her life invested in something that went nowhere. She told me all of it that first afternoon at the café, with a calm that genuinely surprised me, no drama and no fishing for sympathy, like someone who'd already made peace with her own story.

When she mentioned her bank was chasing her over some debts, I braced myself for the ask I was certain was coming next. It never came. She was just telling me about her life, nothing more to it than that.

I ended up spending most of that month with her, dinner every evening at a different place she picked out carefully, mostly small, tourist-free spots she'd known her whole life, walking along the Chao Phraya at dusk once the heat eased off and the temple lights started flickering on across the water. She introduced me to a couple of her friends one afternoon, with a nervousness on her part I didn't miss, as if that introduction meant more than what she was actually saying out loud. On the flight home I was seriously considering trying to make something of it long term, despite having sworn off relationships after a broken engagement a couple of years earlier that still stung whenever I let my guard down.

We talked every day from then through to January 2020, messages in the morning before I left for work, the odd video call at night when our schedules lined up despite the many hours of time difference, and eventually we organised a trip together to Koh Chang. Best holiday I've ever had, without a doubt. The beach, the food, her company through the whole day, nothing rushing us and nobody to answer to.

I remember one whole afternoon lying under a tree near the water, doing pretty much nothing but talking rubbish and eating fruit she'd bought that same morning at the local market, mangosteen and rambutan that she peeled with a skill I never managed to pick up myself. We had dinner several nights at a small seafood place right on the beach, tables practically touching the sand, candles in glass jars so the wind wouldn't blow them out. It was the kind of day you keep carefully in your memory, the kind you go back over again and again afterwards trying to work out the exact moment it all started to go wrong.

There were moments, though, where she'd say or do things that felt like she was keeping some distance from me, like there was a part of her I didn't have access to yet. I put it down to cultural differences, without thinking much more of it. She also suggested I spend some time in Pattaya on my own while she was busy with work, which I found rather strange at the time. In hindsight it was probably a test I didn't even realise I was taking.

One night in Pattaya I went out on my own after a whole day of barely speaking to anyone, left my phone in the hotel room without a second thought, charging away silently on the bedside table, and ended up buying a lot of lady drinks, one after another, with no control whatsoever over what I was doing and not much awareness of the hours slipping by.

Woke up with a terrible hangover, head about to split and my mouth completely dry, and a far worse text from Noi waiting on the screen, who'd been trying to reach me all evening with no luck, dozens of missed calls and messages growing shorter and colder by the minute. I video called straight away to show her the empty room, nobody else there, slowly panning the phone around the whole space so she could see even the bathroom, but that wasn't enough to fix anything.

I still don't know exactly what she thought had happened, or whether someone had seen me that night and told her afterwards. Whatever it was, she felt she'd lost face in front of someone, and it genuinely hurt her. I tried to fix it for days, calling, writing, apologising every way I could think of, but I couldn't.

I flew home through Beijing in January 2020, heartbroken and with the feeling I'd wrecked the whole thing myself in a single stupid night, fully intending to go back soon once things had calmed down a bit between us. I remember the layover at the airport, exhausted and turning the same message over and over in my head, with no idea that particular airport would become a name everyone would know within a few weeks. A virus had just started spreading around the world and none of us had any idea what was coming for all of us.

Months into lockdown she messaged out of nowhere. Sent a short video telling me how she was coping with the confinement, and suggested we could stay friends, supporting each other through all the madness happening in the world. I thought, naively perhaps, that something good had come out of the whole mess.

Then she went distant again, no explanation of any kind, messages getting shorter and more spaced out until they nearly stopped altogether. I asked for a clear answer about what was actually going on between us, tired of all the uncertainty, and she said we could never be together again because I'd hurt her too much that night in Pattaya. I asked why she'd reached out then, if she'd known that all along. Never got an answer to that question, no matter how much I pushed over the following days.

A few weeks later I looked at her Facebook, almost by accident, and saw she had a new man in her life, photos together, comments from friends of hers I recognised from our old conversations. I sent a message wishing her well, sincerely. No reply.

I don't hold anything against her. She's a lovely woman and we had really good times together, the kind you don't forget easily no matter how much time passes. The age gap between us, more than twenty years, certainly didn't help, and the way I behaved that night in Pattaya didn't help either, that much is clear to me now with some distance from it all. Some things just don't work out, no matter how much you want them to or how well they started.

I won't forget her though.