That’s the last clear memory. I lie very still and wait for the room to settle. I have imagined a life without you sometimes. I did it absent-mindedly after a fight, when we’d made up but my throat was still clenched with resentment. Or when the cute guy at the supermarket rushed to discount the bouquets early because he knew how much I loved flowers, that I always bought myself a bunch on a Friday. You didn’t like it. You said cut flowers made you think of death. It was just another one of those things you said. You said so many things all the time. A life without you always struck me as a life of empty quietness.

Yet emptiness is the opposite of what I am experiencing. It isn’t an emotion exactly, rather a physical sensation: a tingling. I’m thinking about the parts of my body I never think about: the backs of my calves, the tips of my elbows, the shells of my ears, the interstices between my toes and fingers. I’m able to locate it in the middle of my chest – ventricular fibrillation – electricity travelling along the tiny wires of my nerve endings.

It jolts me up and I stand for a moment, stunned.

I start blindly towards the kitchen. With each slow step something of what is packed inside starts spilling out, like I’m punctured somewhere.

Go on, I tell myself. Go on, move, walk. So I walk.

I walk with my shoulder to the wall so that nothing can grab me in the semi-darkness but my arse hits the phone stand and I look at my hips, disappointed, because I have put on weight and my belly sticks out like I’m pregnant. A sharp pain folds me in two and my hands shoot to my back to soothe the period pain. I realize that your and my baby will never be born and I have to lean against the wall while white grief washes over me and I feel the oldest I have ever felt. I think of how often my patients ask for water and how many times I have poured it into a tea cup, cool from the tap, and held it to their lips. My dry mouth meets the edge of your CHOOSE LIFE mug and, as cold water trickles down my throat, the noise within me finally stops and I know what the problem is.

I have never been a person alone.

After ten years with Neil, I don’t know how to do it. I place my hands flat on the counter, inhale, open my eyes. Familiar things. I see the engagement ring between the pile of dirty dishes and the heart-shaped post-its. And this week’s shopping list, a neat round water mark on its top-right corner.

I pick it up and read the items one by one.

04/01/2016

04/01/2016

6 eggs

sandwich bread

diet coke

tampons

apples

sugar

deo

cotton wool

pizza