What is the word for this occurrence…

What is the word to be used when you lived for a year in the same room as another person, but at different times, only to discover this fact, as lovers, twenty five years later?

Whilst studying for a BA I lived above a butchers shop a five minute walk from the Psalter Lane Art college, Sheffield. For five and a half days a week the flat had a slight charnel smell, until Saturday noon closing time when the whole shop was washed down with carbolic and bleach. The bleaching included the beech slat mats used on the floor behind the counter, which were then left outside to dry until Monday. One day I arrived home to find the beech slats in a skip, no longer permitted on health & safety grounds.

After 30 years of finding no use for them I suddenly found a context. Turns out my partner lived in the same flat a few years earlier after attending the same art college, had the same bedroom, remembered the bleach smell at the weekend. The bleached beech slats have become a seat for two, occupying space concurrently rather than consecutively.

Edition of 2

© Mark Purcell