When you lay upon my body and moved inside, when you kissed my mouth hard, with each rough jolt I replayed what you’d said – I’m not going near a woman again unless I truly have feelings for her. And I thought how silly it was that those words had hurt me so intensely. When, as we lay there hand in hand, I realized they were in fact the proof of how you felt.

The whole weekend …

The whole weekend I was awash with love.

My joy impenetrable. Nothing could pierce it. Not being in the red the day after payday. Not the guilt about Dale. Not the trip to Sainsbury’s when he made us wait for an age by the chilled section to ensure we were first on the scene for the new yellow-stickered clearance items. Not Edward’s unreasonable grumpiness on the phone because he wouldn’t have any Bovril until Monday. Not even your silence.

When Monday finally arrived, I awoke at six, in Dale’s bed, listening to his elephantine snores, his body encased in most of the duvet, which in turn exposed my shivering body to the early, frosted air. But I was lofty with excitement at seeing you again in a few hours. Still high on my perch.

Then I remembered.

It was her birthday.

It’s funny, grief, isn’t it? How you die with them. Whoever you were before has gone. Your ghost walks the earth. You look the same, sound the same, but are not the same. You don’t breathe oxygen the way you did before. You negotiate life under an ocean. Drowning as you do your shopping, drowning as you ride the bus, drowning as you go to work. You can’t live with this, you think. No one could live with this. It’s unliveable.

Then there are moments when your head rises above the water. You find something funny, laugh. A glimpse of your previous self. Until you are submerged once again. Guilty for your brief ability to breathe.

Over time the water levels drop.

First you tread water; then you swim; then you wade; then you are paddling; until finally you are walking alongside a stream. It flows next to you. Wherever you are, whatever you do, however happy you’re feeling, it’s there.

But sometimes, be it a song, a crumpled shopping list found in a coat pocket, an anniversary, their birthday, your birthday, Christmas, hearing the theme tune to Coronation Street, which you’ve avoided ever since, the stream becomes a river, becomes an ocean and you are drowning once again.

I should have been making her breakfast in bed. Eggs. Scrambled with a dash of milk, as she liked it. A mug of builder’s brew. A fashion magazine on the tray. An expense she couldn’t normally justify.

‘Oh my goodness,’ she would have said. ‘Does this mean I have to do this for you in a few weeks?’