I heard Joe moving about in the room next door, drawing the curtains. I left mine open, preferring to have the view out to the night sky, to the stars and the moon. My candle burned brightly in its jar at the side of the bed. I propped up my pillow and picked up the Agatha Christie novel I’d found downstairs. I tried to read by the light of my phone, but it strained my eyes to see the text, and I ached with tiredness, so I put the book down and lay on my side, looking out through the windows into the deep velvet darkness of the night.

As I drifted in that dreamy stage halfway between wakefulness and sleep, I found myself back in our London flat. It was the last night Joe and I slept together, the last time we shared a bed. The memories were distorted, and in some part of my mind, I recognised it wasn’t real, but it felt real. The bedroom was exactly as it had been: small, untidy, the bed taking up almost all the floor space, we could only walk around it if the wardrobe doors weren’t open. I knew that it was after Daniel’s death because of the mess: clothes were heaped on the floor, empty cups, wine bottles. It was claustrophobic, dirty, awful. We hadn’t cleaned the flat since we lost Daniel, neither of us had the heart to do it, we were afraid of destroying any last vestige of our son. The pyjamas he’d slept in the night before he disappeared were tucked beneath my pillow; I held them to my face a hundred times a day, inhaling whatever was left of Daniel, trapped in the fibres, wishing I could breathe him in and exhale him, fully formed again, flesh and blood, heartbeat, smile. I’d slept in Daniel’s bed many times since his death, but that last night before I left Joe, I stayed in the double bed beside my husband, resentment hardening in every artery and capillary until I was more statue than human, until my heart barely beat, until I was barely capable of feeling pain. I listened to Joe’s snores, and each time he inhaled, my anger calcified. I used to love him, but the soft, mushy love was gone; needle sharp hate had taken its place. It was cold, it eclipsed my grief; hate was the best anaesthetic.