I gather the pile of unopened mail from the counter: letters, leaflets, a couple of slim parcels. I don’t know who they’re for; I haven’t had the heart to look at the names on the address labels. They must be Neil’s, or mine, of course; who else’s? I take the mail and the folder from my bag and bring them to the coffee table. I sit down on the floor in front of the sofa with my legs crossed under the coffee table like I’m about to have dinner off it, which is another thing I’ve taken to doing. Is there anything sadder than eating dinner alone in the kitchen? Mostly, I snack in front of the TV, which isn’t in itself less sad, but it at least makes dining on your own feel like less of an occasion, less of a reminder of everything that’s changed. I arrange the letters on top of each other by decreasing size; the folder is the largest so it goes at the bottom. I push the pile to my left. One and a half months of letters is a lot of letters.

I begin opening them from the top of the pile. Most of it is uneventful news. A couple of charity catalogues, a gift calendar from the bank, my nursing college’s annual alumni brochure. A few takeaway menus. Mostly, it’s bills in Neil’s name. Neil owes money on the electricity bill, Neil owes money on the gas bill, Neil hasn’t paid the last two months of our broadband and so unfortunately our internet has been disconnected, but could be restored immediately by simply calling an 0800 number, free of charge from any mobile on the same network. Neil is behind with the water payment that was owed in a single yearly instalment a month ago. Neil has been summoned to appear in court but does not have to attend so long as he agrees to pay council tax arrears and cover for court costs of up to sixty-five pounds. The bills aren’t coming out of his account because I used his card reader and his savings card to transfer six months of our rent payments into my own private one. He was bound to forget something leaving in a hurry like that. I was among the pre-set payees so that was easy and after that his savings account was empty. He’d better make the best of his time with that girl; he might have to work a second job soon.