Swaying, you took her by the hand. She wasn’t even drunk. She was just posh. A party girl. That’s what they’re called, isn’t it? Whereas if she was poor, she’d be a slapper. Was I just a slapper to you? How were you not aware of me in the shadows? How could you not sense such hurt happening so near to you?

You walked away. Hand in hand. On the same side of the road as me. Oblivious. Laughing, kissing, laughing. I knew what that walk meant. I’d been on one oh so recently, hadn’t I?

Without warning, I threw up on the pavement between my legs. It sizzled on the concrete. Once I’d raised my head, I’d lost you in the darkness.

The merriment continued through the window. The world still turning. Like it always does. I didn’t cry. I didn’t even want to cry.

I retrieved my mother’s spattered shoes and scrambled in my bag for a tissue. There wasn’t one, only a Costcutter receipt, which merely smeared the vile juice from one part of the shoe to the other and which I then had to discard on the ground. A snapshot, in this lovely part of London, that showed me up for what I was.

On the Tube, I stared at myself in the window opposite. My ghost. Her ghost. We were the same. To others, I’m sure I appeared blank, lifeless, but inside were images of the two of you I couldn’t erase. Images I’d created. You kissing her naked body. Fucking her from behind. A perverted movie I couldn’t switch off.

I’d fully intended to go home. You must believe me.

It was at Ealing Common that the shift happened.

I climbed the steps of the station and stopped midway. A man tutted at me for blocking his exit. But I didn’t care. Didn’t move. Didn’t give a shit about anything other than what you’d done. And as I stood, people passing me by, it rose from my blistered feet and spread through me like a wildfire.

There was no conscious journey between standing there and standing outside your flat. It was trance-like. Hypnotic. Can you sleepwalk while awake? You’d know, Doctor.

I leant against your car, looked up at your window. The lounge light was on. I couldn’t breathe. Knowing what was going on in there. Drinking. Talking. Kissing. Listening to music. Our song. Her sitting where I should have been sitting. Lying where I should have been lying.

I lit a cigarette. Took an elongated pull. Do you have any idea how you’d made me feel? Do you understand now? The inner force that pulled the metal striker wheel of my lighter towards your car like a magnet? What made me press hard, deep, into the metallic paint? Silently screaming, until my possessed hand stopped the contact.