Later I found out Izzy had known for ages. Naturally, because life is just one humiliation after another, she didn’t tell me that until I’d spent a month talking about it nonstop. Dissecting every tiny moment. Wondering out loud if there was some way Hannah would change her mind. Love didn’t just disappear, did it? Mine didn’t. It wasn’t some light I could switch on and off. It was something that had grown inside me, its roots tangled around all the organs of my body. I needed it to live. For a long time, I hoped. Eventually, I stopped. Hoping, I mean. I didn’t like to think about whether or not I could ever stop loving Hannah. I learned not to examine those feelings. Which is why I didn’t ever want to see her again. I had to pretend she didn’t exist. Izzy too. They were too inextricably linked.

People say you can’t change the past, but it isn’t true.

Dad had put Mum in a home. He promised he would never do that. He promised he would always take care of her. But he didn’t, and that changed everything that had gone before, making old memories bitter instead of sweet. It was the same for me and Hannah. Everything we once had was tainted. It was all rotten.

Lying back on my bed, staring at the roof, unable to stop beating myself up for being so naive and stupid, I realized what I needed were new rules. I may have gently exploited the loophole in my relationship rule—oh, and the bit about not kissing actual lesbians or bi girls because it leads to loopholes, obviously—but that’s why I needed a safety net. A way of protecting myself from getting my heart splattered again. If any of these things happened it would be time to pull the plug on this little experiment with Ruby. I took out my phone and made a note of the five horsemen of the apocalypse: the deal breakers, the harbingers of doom.

1. No acting like a sap. So if I catch myself gazing longingly and thinking things like she’s the most beautiful girl in the world, I’m in trouble.
2. No we-ing. As in we love this, we are cat people, we are going to live happily ever after.
3. No daydreaming. Fantasies about a future we’re not going to have is a major red flag.
4. Absolutely no serious conversations. That means conversations about Mum or not wanting to go to Oxford or my complicated feeeelings about things like Dad or the wedding.
5. No fighting and especially no making up. Fighting about stuff implies you have some kind of investment. Making up after a fight is protecting that investment.

I vowed to myself that I would not break any of these sacred edicts. No excuses, no exceptions.