When he finally defeated it, he held it up, arm straight like he’d pulled Excalibur from the stone, before flinging it to the floor. Then, without warning, he threw off the covers. Exposed me. My nakedness. I couldn’t stand it as he stared. You’d do that sometimes, wouldn’t you? But it felt so different with him. Awful. To make it stop, I pulled him towards me, and with him, the covers, lifting his chin to force his eyes onto my face. Then I felt uncomfortable him even doing that, so I kissed him to force his eyes to shut.

He was soon lying on top of me. This was it. The big one. Except it wasn’t big at all. After some condom-fumbling, he was in me. We moved out of sync. I closed my eyes. Imagined you through the heavy breathing and ‘Oh, Constance . . . I’m fucking you.’ But it wasn’t you. It was Dale. I prayed he’d come prematurely. I’d comfort him. Say it was fine but with a slight edge to my tone like it wasn’t really fine and feign disappointment. It wasn’t happening quickly enough, though, so I had no choice but to fake it. I’d barely begun my performance when, thank God, he bolted and distorted and shuddered before saying, ‘Oh fuck.’ Then slid away from me.

We lay there. Staring at the ceiling. His arm blindly sought my head and clumsily stroked my hair. I sat up and searched for my robe to get the pack of fags from the pocket and put one in my mouth.

‘You can’t smoke that in here, remember,’ he said.

I removed it and popped it back in the packet.

He rolled over to face me. ‘Hey . . . that was amazing . . . How about you? Did you—’

‘Yeah, course. Couldn’t you tell? Sorry – I’m just going to have a few puffs of this in my room.’

‘Hurry up,’ he said, turning over.

Once out of the bed and within the comfort of the robe once again, I stood for a few moments, still, quiet. Listening to his breathing grow deeper and deeper until it morphed into a snore.

So that’s how it went. My new life. My new boyfriend.

At work, I remained distant from you, professional. Your ego resisted the change initially.

‘You’re very quiet, Constance. Are we not friends anymore?’

‘What? No . . . everything’s fine.’

Though you knew it wasn’t. And I couldn’t help but relish the pull I’d created towards me. My increased power. Until you’d learnt to accept our new way of being. Stopped asking me. Trying. And the tables had turned once again.