At Christmas he gave me a picture he had kept in his sock drawer for 30 years

I was in high school when my mother decided I was old enough to accompany her to the Christmas party at Artransa Film Studios where she worked as a film and television director. (Mom was widowed.)

I remember what I wore and will still wear today, even though I've moved beyond one-shoulder dresses: a simple, soft fabric, muted purple, dusky pink and pale apple green stripes.

I knew a lot of the studio staff. But I became aware of a group pushing a handsome young man who finally asked me to dance.

So it was Boris Janjic, the cinematographer Mom had mentioned. He didn't say much, worried about his weak Croatian accent. But we danced and I think I flirted.

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Unbeknownst to us, the studio photographer took a picture.

Over the next few decades, Mom would mention Boris to me, he had moved to another studio, he got married. He had children.

Me too.

Eventually I got divorced and moved back to Australia. In Sydney I worked as a TV presenter and in my late thirties realized that my childhood dream of writing novels was not coming true. I quit my job and moved to a “backwater” a friend told me about called Byron Bay. (Now overrun with movie stars, wannabes and influencers.)

Those were great years. I had little money, I rented a small cabin from a once famous footballer and his wife who ran the local pub. I lived alone with my dog ​​Sheila and finished my first novel.

It was published, sold well, and I was away.

In retrospect, I had the perfect rustic beach seclusion other than when my kids came home from college. I wrote and wrote. Nine novels (published) later, I looked up.

Movie friends invited me to dinner while they were shooting a great animated film . I sat across from a bearded guy with a throaty accent who rang a bell.

"You're Zoran, the animation guy!" Boris d'Artransa's brother! How is Boris? I asked.

He glanced at me and, in his thick accent, said, "Borrrris is single."

I left with Boris' phone number in my pocket.

And so the phone calls began. Boris admitted he's always had a crush on me and kept asking my mum how I was, leaving clues.

I'm going to Sydney to visit mom. Boris takes me to lunch in an outdoor cafe by the beach. I was charmed by the freesia and frangipani blossoms on the dashboard of his car.

We talked for hours as the sun went down over Pittwater .

Months later, Boris arrives in Byron Bay. We hung out with mum who had moved there too.

So Boris moves to Byron, and we buy a house.

This first Christmas together, Boris hands me an envelope. I pull out a photo – of us dancing the first time we met, over 30 years ago. He sheepishly says the photographer gave it to him the week after it was caught and he had kept it in his sock drawer ever since.

In my mother's last years, Boris promised her he would "always take care of me".

And he does.

Di Morrissey AM is the author of 29 novels, including The Night Tide, now by Pan Macmillan.