Jonathan isn’t much help anyway, not being as he puts it ‘the lifting type’, but we manage to get everything into the van; it’s mostly clothes in black bin bags, a few books, the television, boxes of kitchen stuff including food, my weights, a couple of rugs and cushions and some bedding. The only furniture is the Eames chair, the Philippe Starck coffee table, the computer desk and the ergonomic chair thing that is giving me back problems. Everything else belongs to the landlord. Jonathan says that the Eames chair and the Philippe Starck coffee table might as well go in the recycling, because they are really old-fashioned, and I should get new ones like the ones he saw in Elle Decoration. I tell him he doesn’t realise how much it costs to buy a flat, and that I can’t afford to start throwing away perfectly good furniture. Not throwing away, says Jonathan, recycling, he would never throw anything away, it’s unethical, but he still thinks I need new furniture and that I should start with an empty shell. I say this is just because he wants to come shopping with me and buy stuff that he can’t afford, and he says that’s not true, he can buy anything he wants, and I say yes but it’s all on credit which you never pay off, and so by the time we finally set off in the van we aren’t speaking to each other. This is not unusual. In all the years that we’ve been best friends, Jonathan and I have fallen out so many times that we’ve got the routine down to a tee.

When we get to the new flat Jonathan has to start speaking to me again so that he can tell me everything that’s wrong with it. The building is facing the wrong way, so the Feng Shui is all out of alignment, apparently, although I thought he gave all that up when he stopped going out with that Feng Shui astrologer last year, and he started referring to it as ‘Feng Shit’. When we park the van and take the first load of stuff up the stairs, he complains that there isn’t a lift, so I tell him that this is a postwar block and that they didn’t put in lifts in those days, people didn’t mind walking up a few flights of stairs and it’s only on the third floor. He doesn’t like the red brick, and he doesn’t like the external landings that run along the front of the building, and when he catches sight of some plant pots and window boxes on the second floor with primroses and crocuses and geraniums in, I think he’s going to faint with disgust. When I get the key in the door, he walks in first and starts looking around as if he owns the place, while I’m still struggling with boxes and bags, and he makes helpful remarks like ‘not much storage space’ and ‘very little light in this room’. I console myself with the knowledge that Jonathan will never own his own home, that he is living in a Housing Association flat that could be taken away at any moment when they find out that he got it under false pretences, claiming that he was a victim of homophobic harassment in his last place. In fact, this never amounted to much more than the old lady downstairs ‘looking at him funny’ but he made such a song and dance that they re-housed him just to shut him up, which I can totally understand.