‘All this because you don’t respect me enough to follow through on things you’ve committed to,’ I corrected, all the receipts adding up to a total I could no longer ignore. ‘This is not on me, well, the tiger mask is, but the rest of it is not. It’s on you. You’re not a nice man, Patrick Parker.’

‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ he cried, suddenly incredulous. ‘You dump me to move to America, come swanning back into London with your desperate text messages and expect me to drop everything for you? Is that it?’

I felt the blood rushing around my body, skinned palms and bruised knees throbbing, the scratches on my stomach burning and my eyes ready to shoot laser beams. In that moment, I was invincible.

‘Stop trying to rewrite the past,’ I yelled, jabbing my finger in his direction. ‘I did not dump you, you dumped me and you were glad to do it. I was in love with you, Patrick. Madly, hopelessly, head over heels in love with you and you lapped it up. As soon as I told you I’d been offered the job abroad, you didn’t even blink before finishing with me.’

‘That’s not how I remember it,’ he said with a shrug. I looked down and noticed two buttons of his fly were undone. The indignity. ‘But I’m sure your version of events works better for you.’

I stood up as straight as my shredded knees would allow, mascara all over my face, jeans stuck to me with sweat and T-shirt stained with blood.

‘I thought about you every day,’ I said. ‘And I see now it was such a waste of time.’

‘Ros,’ Patrick loaded my name with meaning, as though the simple act of saying it out loud was exhausting. ‘I’m trying to prepare for an important meeting and I find you trying to break into my neighbour’s garden, wearing a ridiculous animal head, shouting incoherently, but somehow I’m the bad guy? What are you going on about, what do you want from me?’

You are not going to cry, a voice whispered in my head. You’re not going to cry in the street when you’re already sweating, bleeding and carrying a tiger’s head.

‘I want you to want me,’ I said. There was no point holding back now. ‘That’s all I ever wanted from you. I wanted you to want me the way I wanted you.’

And it was true. I wanted him to want me so badly, it burned me up inside. It was something so simple but it always felt like much too much to ask for. I stood there, raw and real and vulnerable, waiting for him to respond.

But he didn’t say anything.