The tired-of-life woman on the till packed my Jaffa Cakes, forty fags and Vladimir into the plastic bag I’d begrudgingly purchased. She glanced up at me for a second, her eye carrying a glimpse of disgust. Or perhaps she was wondering if there were any Jaffa Cakes left for her. Either way, I somehow felt the need to justify myself.

‘I’m having a party.’ She said nothing, forcing me to add, ‘It’s my birthday, so I’m having a party.’

‘Thirty-six pounds ten,’ she said.

Back home, the silence from Dale’s room reminded me that he was visiting his parents and I was relieved to be alone and free to finally surrender to my anguish.

I changed into your T-shirt and lay on the bed with Jaffa Cakes to my left, Vlad to my right and Blusha on my chest, unleashing tears to our song, ‘At Last’, on loop. Imagining you were listening to it too, regretful, thinking of me. Only swapping it occasionally for Martha Wainwright’s ‘Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole’.

In a short space of time I’d consumed nine fags, half a pint of vodka, emergency contraception and a full pack of Jaffas. I felt damaged and relished the comfort in that. The room spun. I turned onto my side to steady the world, regurgitating liquidized orange jelly into my mouth, which I swallowed back down before circling in and out of sleep, until woken fully by my phone pinging next to my head. The noise brought with it an injection of hope. My drunk-and-disorderly fingers inputted the wrong PIN three times. When I finally unlocked it, there it was. Domino’s, any size pizza for £9.99 weekend special.

I couldn’t return to my sleep. Felt sick. But had to hold it in for three hours or the pill wouldn’t work. I was unable to settle. Didn’t know what to do with myself. The feeling was so overwhelming that I needed to replace it with something else. Something worse.

I knelt beside the bed. Dipped underneath into the filthy darkness, reaching to feel the handle of the suitcase, my drunken brain pounding against my skull, and pulled. Click left, unlock. Click right, unlock. Opened the lid. I sneezed in response to the inhaled dust.

Although the picture of you, us, was the first thing I noticed, that wasn’t my weapon of torture. The diaries were all there. As always. The last one on the top. The one I feared the most. The one I needed to read yet couldn’t even bring myself to touch.

Various colours, differing sizes. Some had the dates on. Others labels. I picked one up. Journal of Angie Jones. It was backed in pastel floral wallpaper. Jones was her maiden name, so it was an old one.