He made a vaguely grateful noise and rolled over, and I slipped out, closing the door behind me. Which meant instead of standing by the bed not really knowing what to do with myself, I was standing in my flat not really knowing what to do with myself. So, in the absence of a big green button labelled Press here to fix boyfriend, I cleaned.

It didn’t bring me quite the same sense of virtuous peace that it brought Oliver, but it was nice to know that when he woke up, he would be in a space that resembled a human dwelling, and not a combination laundry basket/litter bin.

When I was done, he still wasn’t up, partly because the job was a lot smaller than it had been last time I’d attempted a major flat tidy and partly because see above re: bad way. It was, however, getting to the point that I thought he might want to eat something, but looking in my fridge, I found there was nothing in it that wasn’t six months past its use-by date, an animal product, or in an embarrassingly large number of cases, both.

There was a jar of gherkins—because fridges spontaneously generate gherkins even when nobody buys them—except I didn’t think materialising at Oliver’s bedside saying, Hello, darling, I know your father’s died and you’re having a lot of complicated emotions, but I’ve brought you a wally was quite the supportive and/or romantic gesture he needed quite then.

Then I had a genius idea. I would make him French toast. To show that this was a relationship where there was, like, space for each of us to be the French toaster or the French toastee. Then I remembered that there were two tiny flaws in that plan: the first being that I was a godawful cook, and the second being that the main ingredients of French toast were milk and eggs.

But you know what? Fuck it. It was the thought that counted, and there were vegan versions of everything these days. Leaving Oliver a note saying, Gone shopping, have not run away to be cowboy, back soon, I headed out into the crisp November noon.