The setting - a dusty, backward garrison town in eastern Pakistan - is a world away from the glamour of Kensington Palace. And the man sitting here is about as far removed as you could possibly imagine from anyone's idea of lover to the world's most famous woman.
Yet for two tempestuous years before her death in 1997, cardiologist Hasnat Khan was the centre of Princess Diana's world - a man whom, according to evidence at her London inquest last week, she loved deeply, considered her soulmate and wanted to marry.
It was her love for the surgeon and her desire to win him back after he ended their relationship a month before her death that propelled her into a very public, and self-destructive, fling with Dodi Fayed, the man she died alongside in a Paris underpass, the inquest was told.
Unlike some of the princess' other lovers, Dr Khan has refused steadfastly to speak about his relationship with her after her death, maintaining a dignified and loyal silence despite being bombarded with highly lucrative offers.
As speculation mounts that Dr Khan may testify at the inquest into the princess' death, I visit him at his family home in Jhelum, midway between Pakistan's old and new capitals of Islamabad and Lahore, where he gives his first press interview.
Tubbier and greyer than the man described during his romance with the princess as an Omar Sharif lookalike, 49-year-old Dr Khan is relaxed, friendly, engaging and exceptionally courteous. He remains fiercely loyal to Diana's memory, however, and makes it clear from the outset he will not speak directly about his relationship with her.
There are nevertheless things he wants to say, and, speaking with the intensity of a man unburdening himself after a long silence, it is clear that he remains haunted by a past no one seems prepared to let go. The spectre of Diana returns again and again.