It was such a relief to feel it happening again. To feel her take over. It was like putting on the warmest of coats. If you can imagine a warm coat that somehow also made me look smoking hot.

I still could have kept it under control, I think, even then. I wasn’t inclined to drink most of the time. It was just a few drinks when I hung out with April, which I’d started to do twice a week. Though it was generally more than a few when I saw you.

I think you finally, belatedly need to take a little responsibility for that, Niall. Drunk Louise didn’t gain power and frequency without help. She bloomed under your encouragement as much as mine.

I want you to think back to those first dates of ours. To think back honestly, and to ask yourself how they must have been for me. How hard it was every time you told me about Dina, and about the raw anger you felt towards her. The hurt.

It’s not the only thing I remember about those dates, of course. I remember learning things about you. Your hatred of ABBA. Your love of Miles Davis and Nat King Cole. Your secret obsession with Star Wars, which nobody from work was allowed to know about. Your equal love of food and your determination to eat organic.

I’m aware of your influence on me, too. It was through you that I started to appreciate really good food. Beyond pizza, I mean, which I’ve always enjoyed heart and soul. The first time you cooked beef wellington, it was a revelation. It was extraordinary to me that you could make something so good in an ordinary kitchen.

You laughed at me as I gorged myself on three helpings.

‘There’s a whole other course to come, you know,’ you told me.

I said I’d just have to borrow another stomach from somewhere, and you gave me the hugest grin. You told me how happy you were that I enjoyed food.

‘It was so frustrating being with someone who was constantly dieting,’ you said. ‘Dina made food her enemy.’

I honestly didn’t know whether I felt good about that, or awful. I washed away any more thought with another glass of Médoc.

I also learned in those early days that you were far more impulsive than I have ever been. Far more likely, too, to put everything off until tomorrow. I remember being fascinated and horrified when you said you’d leave the washing-up until the morning. How I itched to do it, because I knew I would lie awake worrying about it. Though, in fact, by the time we’d spent a good hour in extended lovemaking, I slept like a baby. It was a revelation.