Getting Pavel to Prague was never going to be easy. Pavel Sieger was a screenwriter of genius. Blindness lurked in his family genes and he had recognized the onset symptoms only too well. Determined that his last visual memories would be of somewhere truly special, he took a flight to Prague four years ago when his doctors told him to expect the darkness to descend. He went blind on a winter’s night in a pension in the Old Town, and always looked back to that last glimpse of the cobblestones of the Charles Bridge, the city silhouetted against the gathering dusk, and – when he peered over the balustrade of the bridge – the slow green suck of the river below.

We became lovers, a tribute to his playfulness, his imagination, and his raw courage in the face of blindness. Later, he had an accident that broke his neck and left him paralysed from the neck down. What was left – far more than you’d ever imagine – became my glad responsibility. My son’s natural father, H, paid for a specially adapted apartment and round-the-clock care overlooking the estuary in Exmouth. I was still living and working in London, but Pavel and I talked daily on the phone, and though a physical relationship was out of the question, I like to think we became even closer. A stroke took Pavel earlier this year, and disposal of his ashes falls to me.

Those ashes have been in my bedroom wardrobe all summer. I keep them in a brown plastic container about the size of one of those glass sweetie jars I remember from my childhood. The container has a screw lid and I’ve checked the contents. Pavel, when he died, was skin and bone. A thin grey dust, speckled with tiny white fragments of that same bone and something darkly granular, is all that remains. In my head we still talk, and we both agree that there’s only one resting place for what’s left of him. It has to be a moment on the Charles Bridge, preferably towards the end of one of those smoky autumnal dusks that Prague saves for special occasions. I will unscrew the lid, mutter a line or two from a poem I know he loves, and upend the container. Gravity, and the wind, will do the rest.

And so, this glad September morning, I’m en route to Gatwick Airport with my little black carry-on suitcase and a self-printed boarding card for the 11.55 EasyJet flight to Prague. Malo, my son, has a longstanding date with a couple of mates in Brighton and has volunteered to drop me off on his way. He has no idea why I’m going to Prague, and neither does he bother to ask, and in this respect I’m blessed by youth’s unrelenting self-absorption because this is a deeply private expedition and I’ve no great urge to share it.