My hands are shaking, and I push them behind my back as if to hide them. The idea that he thinks I’ve been using him to get back with Patrick is horrifying. My stomach clenches until I think I might throw up and I want to hold him so badly. He must feel dreadful. What did he feel when he saw me on the balcony? I imagine all that lovely vitality in his face dying away and I feel sick.

I want him suddenly and desperately. I want to say sorry for doubting him. I want to hug him and hold him close, listen to him laugh and inhale his scent of green tea. But the silence of the room seems to mock me with that wish, and I sink onto a chair, still holding his letter. This can’t be over. I won’t let it.

I think of this month. All the wonderful silly dates. Laughing together. That slow dance in the candlelight. I’ve never felt so alive or so seen. Jesse seems to notice things about me that no one else does. He seems to care more than anyone else has either. My childhood was so chaotic, and I clung to the notion that my father loved me. But he didn’t really know me. No one does apart from Jesse. He is the only one who’s ever cracked the shell I grew around me as a matter of survival when I was small. And even when he sees everything, I don’t feel naked and exposed because he’s seeing me with those warm brown eyes of his. Those kind eyes.

At times, this month has been scary because I have so many feelings for him. It’s such a leap of faith to invest your heart with someone. It’s something I’ve always resisted doing fully. I cared for Patrick, but it was nothing compared to what I already feel for Jesse. And it’s only now I’ve lost him that I realise just how much he’s come to mean to me. The thought of never seeing him again fills me with panic, and all my fears of him leaving me when bored fall away to nothing beside the pain of actually having lost him.

I stand up and pace over to the window, staring unseeingly out onto the yard. Where would he go? I think back to our conversation this morning and stiffen suddenly. He wanted to go to his mum and dad’s house earlier on. “That’s where he’s gone,” I say out loud. Then I frown. “But where the fuck do they live?”

A few minutes later I steam through the packed office downstairs, still dressed in my morning suit with my top hat under my arm and my gaze fixed straight ahead.

“Oh Zeb,” Felix drawls. “When did the office uniform become so formal? Can’t we talk about this?”

“Nope,” I say.