But I can’t go on this way. I’m going to have to seek medical help and soon, before I keel over from fatigue – or stress. In the small hours of the nightmare mornings, sleep mockingly snatches me up, and lifts me high, only to delight in suddenly dropping me. So I sit in the dark and wrap memories round me like a comfort blanket.

And I think.

Too much.

About you and me, Callum. But mostly about you.

D’you remember this photo? The two of us daring to hold hands in public, true happiness in our eyes. My face is in profile and there’s more of the back of your head than the front in the picture. It shows the side of your face, though not your eyes, but it doesn’t matter. I have the full image in my mind. You and I were at a funfair and you shot down five targets in a row to win a stuffed tiger for me. I was so proud of you. Five targets in a row. I hugged you so tightly as you laughed at my delight, and the stall owner offered to take our photo. How could we say no? But even then you weren’t keen on having your picture taken so you turned to me and away from the stall owner at the last moment and ruined it. I printed and kept the photo anyway, and, when you died, I filed it – beneath clothes or books or at the back of the wardrobe. I can’t really remember its exact last resting place, but it stayed buried for years.

When Nathan died and I was finally clearing out his things, there was our old photograph, hidden at the back of a drawer where I could’ve sworn I never put it. Using my smartphone to scan it, the photo became the image on my home screen. It’s one of my lifetime favourite memories. In that moment when the photo was taken, we were both happy. Innocently ignorant and truly happy. I’m struggling to remember how that feels.

I swore I wouldn’t do this any more: look at your photo and yearn for what might’ve been. What good does it do? You, the real you, are long gone. I’m talking to a man who is no longer here. You’re dead. That’s all there is to it.

Except it isn’t.