I spent the last two months of our relationship staring straight past my boyfriend’s head. I played a lot of Candy Crush. It was just easier for everyone that way. I was such a good girlfriend, god damn it. It was an outrage how lovely I was. I was the very best until the morning, the morning that came from nowhere, when I woke up and said, ‘I’m going home.’ He just rolled over onto his side, gave me a filthy look like I was quitting, slipping out early. His last words to me: ‘Don’t misrepresent the company.’

‘How did you get into it?’ Kevin asked. He was doing his version of eye contact.

I shrugged. ‘Well, I’d gone all that way. I had to do something.’

*

On the first day of a freezing spring, I came in to find the light not working and Kevin absent. I loitered. I hung around late, scuffing the concrete, flicking bits of dirt from under my fingernails. He did not arrive the following day either, although I stood at a visible point on the motorway path waiting for him. I consulted the strangers, gazed into their flat, flavourless eyes, and they adopted innocent faces, like they had nothing to do with this disaster. Some displayed befuddlement at the mention of Kevin’s name. Others just laughed. It wasn’t confusing – it was the opposite. It was the first moment that made sense.

From that day forth, I decided to stay safely inside the garage. I swaddled myself in Kevin’s old sweatshirt and made advancements for us both. I consulted interior decorating magazines; I recognised all the women who posed languidly over chairs. I pushed the fridge to one end of the garage, using all my body weight and will. I unscrewed an overhead light bulb, held its cold glass in my hand, crushed it, threw the shards out the window and watched them fly towards the strangers. I told myself that when the lights went back up, everything would be different. I lit dozens of candles and left them in precarious places. I didn’t cry but, if it had happened, I would have allowed it. On the garage forecourt, I only appeared once or twice and that was to chase away the pigeons. I charged out into the fog and dirt, deliberately angry and ugly. I wanted these people to know that Kevin was capable of great, complicated feelings, and they had done something to him, something awful, and I did not like it.

Management arrived when I was sitting beside the fridge, in flattering candlelight, my fingers resting on my lumpy knees. She had heard of the temporary changes I had made to the garage and she expressed concern. She said that she couldn’t help but notice at the last Friday meeting that I wasn’t really there, my name had to be called at least three times before I snapped to attention. She hunkered down beside me, kindly, as if preparing me for bad news. Her body was uncomfortably close to mine: a body I did not want to know a single thing about.