Sharif’s heart felt like it had actually stopped beating, and just begun to swell and swell until it filled his whole chest. He walked out of the kitchen, out through the garden, and out to the street in a daze, where he had barely managed to round the corner onto Tooting High Street before he retched violently into the gutter, throwing up everything he’d had for lunch, and kept retching until nothing but painful hot gas and sour drips of stomach acid came up. Straightening up, and wiping his mouth on his jacket sleeve, oblivious to the outraged looks about him, he didn’t stop walking until he reached his flat, where he practically ran up the steps and shut the door behind him. He went to the kitchen to get some water for his dry and burnt mouth, and on seeing Candida’s wine glass and cutlery in the kitchen sink, he did something he hadn’t done since he was a small child. He burst into tears. He picked up Candida’s wine glass, cradled it against his face, and sank to the floor, sobbing against the grubby yellow-painted wall.

Won’t Let Us Have a Breakdown

CANDIDA HADN’T HEARD from Sharif for over two weeks; not since he’d given her cold pizza for lunch. He didn’t reply to her flirtatious text messages, or return her phone calls. For the first few days, she thought he’d decided to be cross over her stubbornness for refusing to say ‘I love you’, and didn’t think too much of it. For the next few days, she thought that he really must care to be so stubborn about not calling back, and felt a sneaking admiration for his tenacity. She began to wonder what harm there might be in giving him the three little words he wanted; they were just words after all, just spoken puffs of air. ’Ilu, Ilu! means I love you,’ she hummed to herself at home, testing out the words with the pop song that Sharif had told her he used to sing along to when he was little.