I tried to sit the wig on my head. When the wardrobe assistants attached it to Tom’s, they first used something called Gafquat, which stank and slicked his own hair flat as an otter’s. No seam was visible between The Hair’s edge and his skin. On me, it just sat there – inert, lopsided, almost embarrassed.

I slipped it off, and settled for burying my face in it, smelling the smell that was his and no-one else’s.

The Labradors

Before Alexandre Boulet – before I found myself living with a man who ate only bloody steak, stale bread and hard cheese, limes, salted fish (no fruit, no vegetables), who drank beer and cider and wine but not orange juice or milk, who wouldn’t touch a phone or a computer, who almost never washed his hands – I lived with a man known for being cast in commercials with dogs. Specifically, labradors.

Often the ads were for dog food (Tom throwing a frisbee, Tom rolling in the grass, Tom snoozing on a couch with a dog at his feet). Once, it was for a cologne called Pine Mist. Once it was for a weight-loss meal-replacement shake. Tom brought home some free samples he’d received on set and I threw them back at him.

For one of these shoots I came along. It was an open set. I watched as they filmed him walking along with a blonde labrador, throwing a stick, retrieving it from the dog’s mouth, then throwing it again. When the stick became too wet and slimy, a gloved assistant would dash in and replace it with a fresh one; identical, pre-prepared sticks were stacked nearby.

A couple of hours in, the director said, ‘You’re doing great, Tom, but we’re going to change up the dog. Something doesn’t look right.’

I could have told them what the problem was. They looked too similar, Tom and the dog: same eyes, same hair, same wide open smile, the same joy in taking orders.

They replaced the labrador with a clever-eyed black and white collie, the type of dog who’d bite you just to see if she could get away with it.

Old-Fashioned

Tom used to work in a bar, an expensive one.

The night I met him, I was at that bar with a friend from work who had recently broken up with her fiancé. She was one of those people who seem to get drunk all at once; one moment she was fine, talking about the civil way in which they’d divided their books; the next she was casting her eyes cloudily around the bar for prospects, crying that she’d never find love again, striding off proud and unsteady to the restroom, and coming back with crooked lipstick and a train of toilet paper attached to one shoe.

‘Aren’t you cute,’ she said to Tom, eating the olive from her martini. ‘Buy me a drink?’

‘I’d love to,’ he said, ‘but it’s against the rules.’