Jack’s suitcases are above his wardrobe, the smaller inside the larger. I drag a stool from the kitchen to climb up and reach them. They drop onto the bed and land with a hefty, dull bounce. A puff of dust fills the room. I sneeze and rub my eyes.

‘The last time we did this, we were going on holiday,’ I sigh.

I haven’t packed a single sock yet and already this is exhausting.

Might as well start with socks.

I toss each pair, untouched since June, into the small case: tennis balls with no bounce.

‘Mermaids, clocks or buttons?’ I’d said, indecisive as always. ‘Jack? Oi! Jack!’

‘Hmm? Oh, buttons.’

‘You’re not looking.’ I could see the yellow bar of the BBC Sports app on his phone. I huffed, then instantly hated a part of myself. ‘Fuck. We’re already that couple.’

‘What couple? Where?’ Jack had asked, looking up from his screen and over his shoulder. He still wasn’t listening to me. It would’ve been easy to throw a passive aggressive strop, but we were in Primark. I’d been making a pig’s ear out of choosing patterned socks. Not because I’d needed socks, but because they were a quid a pair. And Jack had been falling perfectly into the stereotypical bored boyfriend mould.

‘This is everything I never wanted,’ I’d muttered.

‘What’s that, darlin’?’ he’d asked, but it was quickly followed by, ‘YSSSS! Get in!’ And of course, Man United had scored. Then he’d remembered me again, smiling with that innocent butter-wouldn’t-melt look that so many fellas pull on a Saturday afternoon. We were that couple. Replicated everywhere a million times over. We weren’t unique. We weren’t even exciting. We were simply them. I’d put all three pairs of socks back on the hook and sulked my way through the mass of shoppers.

I’m folding Jack’s boxer shorts now.

Hold on. What will Trish want with her thirty-eight-year-old son’s boxer shorts? Surely I don’t need to be folding them, holding them …