Music strikes up from the living room downstairs – which means Sid is DJing again. I did once tell her that those decks are strictly a weekend-only activity and then I felt so old I instantly relented and brought home a load of shit-maddening frenetic dance records, just to disprove my own point. It’s like when I left a bad Airbnb review – the only bad one I’ve ever left – and the host replied so viciously that I left another review on another site that was completely complimentary and over the top and I got so carried away writing it that by the end of it I was convinced I had been wrong and was actually madly in love with the place, so I booked another stay there. They declined my booking.

I send Kelly a message:

Okay I’m dying here. I can’t stand these people in my house. I’m trapped, terrified of the future and sick of pretending. Send help

Kelly doesn’t reply, which isn’t like her. I hope she’s not in some way trying to manage me. I thought we’d made an agreement to not do the passive-aggressive thing with each other. We just save that for everyone else in our lives. I look at her Instagram and like her two most recent pictures, out of duty. She is my friend, after all.

My favourite rental flat was above a furniture shop. It had a shower-head in the bath I had to trap under my foot while I soaped my armpits. When I sat on the toilet at night, silverfish scooted around my toes. One time, a cockroach made a cameo. The saving grace was a grubby little balcony, complete with two upturned buckets where I could sit with a friend and smoke. Over the road was a wicker warehouse. The first time Kelly came round I said: Don’t ask me who would want to live in a flat like this because I have no idea.

She replied: Someone who wants to assassinate a wicker salesman.

I said: Kelly, comments like that are why you are the love of my lifetime.

She said: Well, it’s not like I had much choice about you being mine.

I don’t know what she meant by that. She’s funny, Kelly, sometimes. She fights her feelings. It’s like on some level she isn’t satisfied with the way things have turned out. And I wonder whether that’s just motherhood or something else inside her.