My boyfriend and I invented a game on our recent trip to Italy. We called it “invisible gays”, which might have been an attempt at some kind of word play around “gays” and “gaze” – but I was on holiday and feeling lazy, so I didn’t push it.

The game began when one night he took me out to a little trattoria to celebrate my birthday. It was a warm night, and fairy lights were entangled in the fragrant blooming flowers over our heads, and we drank good wine and ate bowls of perfect pasta, and there was candlelight, and it was so romantic I wouldn’t have blinked if two dogs had started smooching over a strand of spaghetti. Che bello!

We were one of four tables, all couples of various ages looking at each other with disgusting wet amorous eyes. During the evening a man selling roses approached the other tables. One young guy even bought one, presenting the blossom with a flourish to his girlfriend, earning applause from other patrons and a round of toothy photos. Caught up in the moment, my partner pulled out his wallet to buy a rose for me too, despite my wildly insincere protestations – but the rose man didn’t even clock us as a couple and wandered off into the night.

I briefly wondered if it was because my outfit wasn’t chic enough for Rome. Then I realised we were the only couple who weren’t the........

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