I could’ve got round to buying a new basket when he took away the old one. But the first week I didn’t feel like it. Replacing it seemed too much of a definitive gesture and I didn’t want to make any definitive gestures then. What use would we have for two laundry baskets if he came back? Then after a few more days I guess the idea of the laundry basket had become a sensitive thing in itself, which brought me right back to the night of the incident, in the quasi-arbitrary way in which daffodils are a reminder of spring, cinnamon of Christmas. The violence he used in slamming his books inside it.

If I leave the laundry in the machine any longer, I’ll have to wash it again tomorrow. I open the round door. With my arms full of clothes, it takes me two minutes to make it to the drying rack in the living room. First, I drop a sock. When I bend over to pick it up pants fall from the other side of the bundle. I lean to the side to retrieve them and the rest of the pile tumbles from my arms on to the floor. This is a moment in which I could very well sit down and cry, but I don’t. I keep things practical.

Player one, you may now make your next move. I breathe deeply and use my next life. I pick up the clothes. I resume the action.

The t-shirts go up easily, so do the vests, the shirts just need a quick shake. Pairing up socks is challenging. It requires some degree of attention but not my full attention. It belongs to the group of mid-level intellectual activities that are particularly tricky in this state, the kind of actions I’ve been trying to avoid. I can feel my mind beginning to think. I look over at the TV still running on mute. The talent show has ended, cutting seamlessly to a nature documentary. There are lions and cats filmed in slow motion as they jump – predators – but then the camera unexpectedly cuts to images of baby birds and ducklings, their down yellow and heartbreaking. There is something soft in my hands: one of Neil’s cashmere socks. It was white and expensive. Now it’s tiny and grey. Still soft.