He’d found his old laptop finally at the back of a cupboard. It was dented and covered in stickers, and he couldn’t believe how heavy that thing was. It wheezed and whined and took ten full minutes to boot, during which time Hamza had rolled himself another joint and sparked up. You’re grieving, intcha, he told himself. It’s fine to have a puff in the day when you’re grieving. And if there was ever a time Gemma was going to let him off smoking in the house this was it. He chuckled to himself.

Pictures. Finally. Only a few, from back before camera phones made decent pictures, but it was enough. He sat cross-legged on the floor, hunched himself over the screen, one finger clicking. Their holiday to Berlin. That weekend in Brighton, when the couple who’d run the bed-and-breakfast had been racist as fuck and Clio had screamed them out and thrown the fry-up on the floor. A picture that was of him but that he knew she’d taken – him doing a shaky thumbs-up just before he went onstage to support Tinie the first time. That Christmas Day when they’d gone for a Chinese and sat at the table by the window giving the finger to anyone who passed. One night at a club, their eyes red from the flash, peeking out from under all her hair as she snuggled into his shoulder. A grainy shot of them in bed, taken on the first phone he’d had with a camera, bare shoulders and mock-surprised faces. There were some nudes too, he could see, but he didn’t want to go in close. It wouldn’t have been right. Not now. He kept clicking, and waiting, and there it was – his first time in a recording studio, the day he’d come in with her to lay down a track on her album.

Flash. The dry-skin warmth of her hands on his eyelids and the gentle pressure of her at his back, pushing him along. Her usual smell – shampoo and face powder. She was on tiptoe to keep her arms up at his face and kept tripping. They rounded a corner and he heard some scuffling as she tried to open a door, then she nudged him into a room and the light flooded in as she moved her hands. It was a tiny space, a bit shabby, not really what he’d thought a studio would look like, but there was a mic in the corner, headphones hanging from a hook beside it and a huge yellow plastic bow tied round the stand. ‘Tah-dah!’ she’d said, laughing, jumping up to kiss his jaw as he’d hugged her tight just because she was so happy.