‘So,’ I said, taking a deep breath in and giving my new boss a bright and glittering smile. ‘When do I meet Mr Snazzlechuff?’

After Ted left me alone to wallow in my pit, I sat at the desk and stared at my reflection in the glass partition between the studio and the mixing desk. The look of despair on my face was altogether too clear since I’d gone at the bloody thing with a full bottle of Windolene I’d found in a cupboard, oddly enough unopened.

Ten years of working every hour god sent and suddenly my career depended on a teenage gaming addict who liked to cosplay as a mid-2000s Jay-Z from the neck down and the saddest Good Boy from the neck up. Where had it all gone wrong?

‘It’s going to be fine,’ I told my own face, even though I didn’t look as though I believed me. ‘You’re lucky to have this job. It’s different and new, that’s all. Everything was different and new once, you’ll be fine.’

But a very large part of me was completely over different and new.

Three years ago, I’d jumped at different and new, lost Patrick, left my friends and whole life behind and for what? To end up right back where I’d left off, only now I was alone and I lived in a shed. Everything was confusing and exhausting, I couldn’t get to grips with any of it: how to decide what to watch in the evening, which politicians were the most evil, who had been cancelled and why. What was I allowed to like, what was I allowed to dislike and where was indifference permitted? No, different and new were on my shitlist. I wanted old and familiar. I wanted easy and understandable. I wanted tried and tested, simple and straightforward, comfortable and known and, without thinking, I picked up my phone, opened Patrick’s text and tapped out a reply, hitting send before I could stop myself.

Hello, stranger, his text said.

Hello yourself, I replied.

‘Well, that’s that,’ I whispered, taking a deep breath and watching a single grey tick appear next to the message, followed by a double grey tick. Message delivered.

Three years of stopping myself from contacting him, three years of having to sleep with my phone in the other room every time I came home drunk or went on a rubbish date or experienced even a flicker of yearning. All of it over in an instant. I looked up, expecting to see some flags fly out, a winged pig zooming past overhead, or to at least hear a distant fanfare, but there was nothing. Life-changing moments were supposed to come with a soul-stirring soundtrack, something to acknowledge their gravitas and importance, but all I had was a soundproofed studio-slash-cell, a half-eaten apple and a bag of Mini Cheddars.