Instead, we held each other, every joint and muscle unwound such that no gap existed anywhere between us.

It was some hours after Friday had given way to the weekend when eventually we left each other. I walked home alone, only wild foxes to confront me in the alley at this time of night, to stare at me with contempt, to taunt me with high-pitched howls. I wrapped my jacket tight to my face, the business of fending off the weather far less important than inhaling the memory of Sophia’s perfume and cigarette smoke preserved in the fabric.

A Best Of compilation from the evening’s conversation played in my head, lifting my breathing to a higher register each time I relived a greatest hit. Snapshots of a life together built in my mind, formed from commercial-break clichés: roaring fires, cats in armchairs, a first dance, the two of us blasting a convertible through America, mountainside proposals, that sort of thing.

I don’t know why, but, by the time I reached my front door, I was crying uncontrollably, the tears falling with a freedom I could never enjoy in the depths of my usual misery. And I was so awake and alive, so far from the fatigue that blunted my existence, yet I fell asleep straight away, slept long and deep, my dreams so innocent for once that they didn’t even demand to be remembered.

12.42 p.m.

The face staring back at me looks dead. The eyes are bloodshot and hollow, the skin beneath them an inhuman grey. My throat feels like it’s been roughed up with a file. The sting of acid in the back of my nose mingles with a whiff of Paco Rabanne from my bare chest. I feel stupid for making the effort – the aftershave and glued-back hair a ridiculous attempt to make me something I’m not.

Motionless, I gaze at myself. The mirror is veined and speckled with rust. This is how I would look after Nate and Joey and the others have finished with me. This is the lifeless face that would be covered by a blanket. This is the milky white body that would be committed to the ground. A desire spreads through me – for the guy, the kid, looking back from the mirror to head straight out into the park this afternoon, to stand in surrender, to let them reach for their weapons and do their worst. Right now, it seems to be what he deserves.

I clutch the rim of the basin. For a minute, I can’t find the energy to break eye contact. It’s almost comforting. I swim in my own uselessness, wrap myself in the familiar blanket of failure.