I did not feel optimistic about being able to finish my diploma course at Raffles College soon enough. The college would take at least a year to get restarted. Then I would need another one or one-and-a-half-years to graduate. In all, I would lose two to three years.

I discussed the matter with my mother. We decided that, with her savings and jewellery, my earnings from the black market and my contract work, the family could pay for my law studies in Britain and those of Dennis.

I planned to leave for England as soon as possible instead of returning to Raffles College to try to win the Queen's scholarship.

In October-November 1945, I introduced Choo to the librarian at Raffles Library (now the National Library) and got her a temporary job there. Her family had moved to a bungalow in Devonshire Road, about a mile from our house and I used to walk her home.

Sometimes we would sit at a quiet spot in the grounds of the big Chesed-El Synagogue at Oxley Rise, close to where the Kempeitei had had one of their centres.

But in November 1945, I could afford to buy a second-hand car, a pre-war Morris refurbished with spares now available from the British army.

As my business improved, I sold it at a profit after a few months and bought a pre-war Ford V8, restored to good condition. It must have been used by a Japanese general during the occupation.

On New Year's Eve, I took Choo to a party for young people at Mandalay Villa in Amber Road, the seaside mansion of Mrs Lee Choon Guan, doyenne of the Straits-born Chinese and a very wealthy widow.

Just before the party broke up, I led her out into the garden facing the sea. I told her that I no longer planned to return to Raffles College, but would go to England to read law. I asked her whether she would wait for me until I came back three years later after being called to the Bar.

Choo asked if I knew she was two-and-a-half-years older than I was. I said I knew, and had considered this carefully. I was mature for my age and most of my friends were older than me anyway.

Moreover, I wanted someone my equal, not someone who was not really grown up and needed looking after, and I was not likely to find another girl who was my equal and who shared my interests.

She said she would wait. We did not tell our parents. It would have been too difficult to get them to agree to such a long commitment. This was the way we dealt with each other; when we ran into difficult personal problems, we faced them and sorted them out.

We did not dodge or bury them. The courtship blossomed. I started to plan on leaving Singapore that year, 1946.

Before I sailed for England, my mother did her best to make sure I would leave Singapore committed to some Chinese girl, and therefore be less likely to return with an English one.

Several students had come back with British wives, often with unhappy results. Their families were upset, and couples broke up or else went off to settle in England because they could not fit into British colonial society, where, they were patronised if not publicly ostracised.

She introduced me in turn to three eligible young ladies of suitable background and good social status. I was not enthusiastic. They were the right age, their families were comfortably off and they were presentable. But they did not arouse my interest.

I was quite happy, having settled on Choo. Finally, I decided to confide in my mother. She was a shrewd woman. Once she realised I had really made up my mind, she stopped her search. Her attitude to Choo changed to one of the warm friendliness of a prospective mother-in-law.

I had earlier told her about Choo, the girl who had beaten me in the English and economics examinations at Raffles College. She had also met Choo during our gum-making days and had visited the family.

Choo's father, Kwa Siew Tee, a banker at the Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation, was a Java-born Chinese like my father and my paternal grandmother. Her mother was a Straits-born Singapore Chinese like my own mother. We had similar backgrounds, spoke the same language at home and shared the same social norms.

Choo had been educated at Methodist Girls' School, and having passed her Senior Cambridge examination, was only 16 when she went to the special class at Raffles Institution for students competing for the Queen's scholarship, but she did not get it.

She told me later she was waiting for her Prince Charming. I turned up, not on a white horse but a bicycle with solid tyres!

In 1940, she went to Raffles College, and we met at dinners and picnics, but at that time I kept my distance as I was in my first year and having a difficult time adjusting. Moreover, I was not eager to get close to any girl because I was not ready for any commitment.

The few times we met socially or in lecture rooms, we were friendly but casual. In 1943-44, however, we came together in a different setting -- myself older by three years of Japanese occupation and seeing her with different eyes; Choo cooped up in a flat doing housework, learning Mandarin, reading whatever books she could get and ready for our gum-making venture.

She belonged to a large family of eight children and had a happy sheltered childhood in a conservative home. Her parents were moderately well off and there was always a car to take her to school, to Raffles College, or wherever she needed to go.

They had a keen sense of propriety. On one occasion, after they moved to Devonshire Road, Choo arrived home from the library riding pillion on my motorcycle to the consternation of her mother. She was roundly rebuked for such improper behaviour.

What would people think! Who would want to marry her! Soon afterwards, her family moved back to Pasir Panjang where they had lived before. Fortunately, by then I had a car.

In the hectic months before September 1946 we spent a lot of time together. Before I left, I got my cousin Harold Liem, who was boarding with us at 38 Oxley Road, to take a whole series of photographs of us, all within a couple of days.

We were young and in love, anxious to record this moment of our lives, to have something to remember each other by during the three years that I would be away in England.

We did not know when we would meet again once I left. We both hoped she would go back to Raffles College, win the Queen's scholarship to read law, and join me wherever I might be.

She was totally committed. I sensed it. I was equally determined to keep my commitment to her.

When I left Singapore on my 23rd birthday, Sept 16, 1946, aboard the Britannic and waved to her from the ship's deck, she was tearful.

So was I.

All my family and some friends, including Hon Sui Sen, were on the quay to wish me luck and wave me goodbye.