‘I remember your clothes.’

‘Oh yes, I remember your clothes too.’

They list:

A red T-shirt, the sleeves just a little too short. They showed off his biceps. On purpose? Not on purpose?

The denim jacket she wore almost continuously in second year.

The headscarf with silver threads that shed all over the place. Cheap.

The sunglasses he forgot at the café and when they went back to get them, they were not on the table and the waiter who had served them denied that they had left anything behind. Do sunglasses count as clothes?

The striped top that hung well below her lab coat and looked dowdy.

His lab coat – the one that was incredibly white, so bluish white that it made her sing the lyrics of the Ariel ad.

His tennis top with the lopsided collar. It always curled, it could never fall flat.

Her green dress, the one she wore when he was ill and she came to his house to give him the notes he’d missed. Because she sat in the kitchen watching his mother cook, the dress afterwards smelt of garlic and coriander.

The jumper that ended up smudged with tears, mascara and snot.

He insisted that it was always harder for those who stayed behind. He was the one forced to move in the same physical space, circling the spot newly vacant, now abandoned, gnawing on the absence. While she had forged ahead into a better world, out of reach, learning, adjusting, improving – she had no time to think of him and he could think of nothing else but her.

She accused him of exaggerating. She only half believed these professions of misery. They had been young, after all, resilient and immature. Instead she took his reproach as an attempt to draw her close, perhaps even win her back. Or else it was part of the flirting game; it certainly was pleasurable.

I’m waiting for you, she texted. It would be like you to surprise me by just appearing. No warnings given. No, Salma, I am arriving on such-and-such a flight. Or, Salma, pick me up from the airport. She laughed at the thought of seeing him again. The comedy of it. Perhaps she would not fancy him at all and instead see him as another client. Someone she would caution not to sit too much, not to lift things too heavy. Why shatter the illusion and spoil the gentle flow of nostalgia?