Tom and I spent our last day together in Howth where we walked the Bog Linn loop with its spectacular views, grabbed some lunch at the artisan market and sat on the grass looking out at the famous Bailey lighthouse. It was a quiet day compared to the joy we felt when we last visited this part of County Dublin, but a gentle acknowledgement to what we both knew could have been had circumstances not piled up against us.

‘I’m going to miss you so badly,’ he said to me, out of the blue, as we sat with the wind in our hair and the sea at our feet. ‘Please say you’ll come and visit soon.’

I turned to him and gently touched his beautiful face with the back of my hand.

‘I’ll be with you as soon as I can, I promise,’ I told him.

‘I love you, Charlie Taylor,’ he said to me, his eyes filling up with tears. ‘I don’t have to go, you know. You could tell me to stay and I would.’

I shook my head and held him close. ‘I love you too, Tom,’ I told him. ‘But I can’t hold you back from this opportunity. Go to London and I’ll be with you someday, I promise.’

And so, he left for London, his heart in pieces and mine the same, not knowing if I’d ever find the space in my mind to let go of my guilt and follow my heart and soul to where I knew it belonged – with him.

The days passed into weeks, the weeks into months and, as Matthew slowly got better, we never talked about what happened that day in Loughisland when he stormed out in the snow. We just focused on his daily progress, teaching him to sit up straight, to eat with a knife and fork, to say words that used to roll off his tongue but which he now couldn’t find. But there were times when I’d catch him staring at me and I’d wonder what was going on in his tortured mind.

Does he hate me for what happened? Does he blame me? Or will he ever be able to let it go and move on as we all have been trying so hard to do? Now he lies in a different ward in a new hospital where he’s learning to pick up the pieces of his splintered life, still unable to walk and neither of us able to discuss the elephant in the room, the man we both were in love with at the same time.

‘We’ve got a name for the band at last,’ Tom told me in his weekly phone call where we try and catch up and keep our precious connection. ‘You’re going to think it’s awful, I know it.’