Months of this and Blake began assuming the worst – multiple sclerosis, a dissected aorta. ‘Maybe you should quit your job,’ Blake said. ‘Why you’re still working the phones at Duke Energy when that was just meant to be a summer internship, I don’t know. Don’t you want to go back to school?’ All the shrinks I went to said it was anxiety. I told them about my dissatisfactory childhood, but they said no, it must be something more.

In bed I received Blake like a dowager, creaking my legs meekly apart and offering a few grunts of encouragement before even those fell silent. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked repeatedly. ‘Don’t you like me any more?’

Blake’s father, Tom, fitted me out with a mouthpiece to slide between my teeth at night. ‘You’re clenching the hell out of your jaw when you sleep,’ he said, skating a probe around in my mouth. I fell in love with the word ‘bruxism’, repeated it to everyone at work. ‘I’m a jaw-clencher, a bruxist!’

*

There was a spring day in Charlotte, 2002, and I think it’s possibly when I was happiest. The sky was wide and bright. The air tripping with the lightness of small birds.

Misrak and I are driving to the courthouse. She’s wearing a white column dress bought on the cheap, a silver tiara set back in her curls, a netted veil. She’s smoking, elbow propped out of the window, and we’re laughing because it is all a moving picture story and we are the protagonists.

On the way there, Misrak screeches, ‘Fuck, I forgot to get rings.’

‘What rings?’

‘Rings. Rings. We need fucking rings to get married.’

We detour to Wal-Mart and Misrak leads the way, marching giraffe-like on satin platform shoes, veil streaming behind her. ‘Jewellery?’ she barks at one of the name-tagged employees. ‘Where can I get jewellery?’

We follow each other down the aisles. I am in a magenta Ethiopian dress that has been shunted around for different weddings. The fabric scratches against my knees, but I stride as if I’m the kind of woman who can withstand any kind of inconvenience.

At the jewellery counter Misrak says, ‘Give me the cheapest ring you have. I need two of them.’ The man at the counter smiles and says, ‘You have a happy life now, you hear?’ as we turn away from him.

At the courthouse, the boy Misrak will marry, Abebe, is hunched over a cigarette, wearing ivory silk pants and kameez. ‘You look good,’ Misrak says. ‘I bet you didn’t think to get rings, you bastard.’

Blake is there too, and it is a moment in our history when I’m still in love with the solidness of him. I stand next to him and he whispers, ‘This will be us soon, but we’ll do it differently, of course.’