There was nothing wrong with my life before I met Poppy, but now I can see a future beyond it. Beyond Brighton and our boisterous, little flat. Beyond school and homework and sneaking out to parties when my parents are asleep.

I’ve thought about it, about what happens next. College. University. Maybe travelling first so I get to see a bit of the world before mine narrows to lecture halls and student nights. But before I met Poppy, it was just something that was out there, on the horizon. This bright, brilliant future coming towards me like a train through a tunnel. A train I’d get on and it would take me away.

Next stop: adulthood.

College.

University.

An internship.

A job.

A better job.

Marriage.

A house.

A kid.

A better job.

A bigger house.

More kids.

Grandkids.

A smaller house.

A hospital bed.

The end.

Isn’t that how it goes?

But when I’m with Poppy, I see so much more than that. I see our first car that we’ll call Jezebel because it’s a cheap little red number. Our first flat and first sofa and first armchair that we buy from that second-hand shop with the taxidermy rats in top hats and have to get home on the bus somehow. Maybe even a dog. A lazy Lab that sleeps between us every night or a boisterous Miniature Schnauzer that follows our rescue cat around, sniffing her bum.

I see it all.

I want it all.

My future.

Different from my parents’.

Different from Rosh’s.

Mine.

One day, Poppy brings me flowers.

‘Here,’ she says and she looks like a little kid, the dimples I’d forgotten were there, reappearing in her cheeks. ‘These are for you.’ She thrusts an assortment of flowers at me – a lilac-coloured rose; an orange tulip; a peach carnation; a white daisy with a yellow button centre; a sunflower; a hydrangea bruised purple and blue, all at once; a lily that’s beginning to open to reveal a pink freckled centre and, in the centre of them all, a single red poppy.

No one has given me flowers before.

I’ve daydreamed of getting them, of course. Wanted red roses on Valentine’s Day. Waited for the buzzer on my birthday, hoping to open the front door to discover my latest crush standing there with a bunch of peonies.

These are certainly beautiful, but odd. I don’t think to question it though, because it’s Poppy and this is the sort of thing she does. I mean, I can’t even imagine her going into a supermarket and picking a plastic-wrapped bunch of carnations out of a bucket. But then she shrugs and says, ‘I don’t know what your favourite flower is, so I got you one of each,’ and I can’t catch my breath for a moment or two.