I’m thinking of what to reply and start scrolling before I know it and then Nicolette says bye and I put my phone back in my pocket and try to find my bank card and what was I doing? And how is it already dark? I zip up my jacket and hurry on. The street is littered with leaves, like the remains of a parade I’ve missed.

I POST

a video of my feet going through the leaves.

No sooner has it gone up than Nicolette likes it and comments with a line of hearts.

I message her:

You are doing that thing we told each other to be aware of and promised to tell each other about

What thing?

After we’ve seen each other in real life, remember? You don’t need to prove our closeness to anyone else on there or the ongoing elevation of your feelings towards me. No cord has been cut. Same way if we haven’t seen each other or spoken for a while you don’t have to NOT like anything I put on there to make me notice you like you’re withholding affection from a lover

I am not doing that! I felt those hearts

Nicolette I know a real line of hearts and you know a fake line of hearts and that was a fake line of hearts

Okay

As soon as I’ve finished messaging, I go and see what Suzy Brambles has been up to. Not much. Which is rather remiss of her, I think.

I catch the Overground to Dalston Kingsland, and from there walk to Stoke Newington. I like the walk down Kingsland Road, past the meat market and cocktail parlours. Old locals sip bitter outside the last few traditional boozers. Unhinged newspapers scud across the street into coffee cups and cigarette ends.

When I get to the house I open the front door and shuffle in past the day’s pizza leaflets and taxi cards. This hallway is getting darker, and it’s not just the year; it’s the clutter. It used to feel spacious in here. Just after I moved in, Kelly came round and ran down the hall in her boots shouting: Is this your house? Is THIS your HOUSE? I said it was, for now. We have a plan, you see, Kelly and I. A plan that has withstood years, relationships, jobs, everything. We envisage spending our dotage together as an elderly couple in a manor house somewhere on the moors. ‘The Commune’, we call it. When we’re in the Commune … we say:

We’ll drink martinis at 9 a.m.

We’ll try all the drugs we were scared of taking when we were younger, like crack and smack

We’ll Whac-a-Mole each other’s haemorrhoids

We’ll have the highest quality mattresses money can buy*

*And employ a person specifically to put duvet covers on