We’d both fallen asleep after sex. Well, you had; I’d only pretended. I watched you the entire night. The way your breath fluttered a strand of hair that had fallen across your face. How you placed your hand on your pulsing heart, the other behind your head in surrender. You looked so peaceful and innocent. I positioned my head next to yours and took a lovely photo of us together. For once without you immediately making me delete it. I wish I still had that photograph, and it angers me that I don’t. But I can still see it. When I close my eyes, just before I go to sleep.

The next morning I imagined we lived together. Rising early to make your breakfast. Do you remember? How you complained I’d boiled your eggs too long. ‘I prefer just cereal,’ you said, throwing them away. So I fetched you some cornflakes instead.

On the way home, I popped into Boots and printed off our photo before deleting it. I wasn’t stupid. I knew it was too risky to keep on my phone. Anyone could accidentally catch a glimpse.

I told Dale I’d bumped into an old friend from school, Mary Feely. Touchy Feely, as she was known. Said I’d seen her at High Street Kensington Station and she’d just moved to London. I wasn’t even sure if Touchy was still alive. I’d heard through the grapevine she had MS or something. Anyway, I told him we’d got drunk together, that I crashed at hers and my phone had run out of juice.

‘It’s got forty-five per cent,’ he said, when I’d placed it on the kitchen table.

‘Jesus, Dale, who are you – Poirot? Mary’s flatmate, Jenny, who’s a teacher, lent me her charger in the morning.’ I added the specific details to make it more convincing. I learnt that from Mum. Although, when she’d elaborate on how she hadn’t had a drink, she wasn’t convincing at all. I left the kitchen, indignant, upset, which I also learnt from her.

Once in my room, I dragged the dusty case from beneath the bed. Coughed as I disturbed the particles. The label from our one holiday abroad, Benidorm, was faded and torn. I unclicked the stiff locks, lifted the lid. They were all there. Colourful and sad. I looked beyond them, blanked them out and concentrated on making a space in the corner where I placed our photograph.

The days we didn’t connect, like the Tuesdays when you were at poker or at the weekends, I missed you terribly. I’d spend them with Dale to keep him satisfied that our friendship still existed. We went to the cinema once, I think. I can’t remember what we saw. There was no space in my head for anything other than you.