So I went home, opened my laptop, and started to write. I wrote and wrote and wrote. It was like the story was being dictated to me. It was about a twenty-eight-year-old woman who had a nightmarish childhood due to her mother passing her around strangers who did terrible things to her, and the girl grew up to be an inventor and made millions and learned self-respect. Note the feminist angle. It was set in Norway. After my doomed trip to the public library, I realized I’d somehow managed to check out some novels, all of them whodunnits set in bleak, Nordic landscapes. Scandi noir. After I finished reading them I thought, that’s what my book is. I tweaked a few details and lo, a Scandi noir it became.

I knew David was going to break up with me. We’d been together eight years and the last six had been fairly rough going. He was like the Arctic. Impenetrable, cold, rugged. I used to find these qualities attractive. Or rather, I remembered the look on my mother’s face when she met him. She was all timid, couldn’t get her words out. He was middle class, which is a bit like saying he was from Middle Earth, wielding a sword that turned blue at the prospect of charging orcs. My mother finds middle-class people – or in other words, anyone with a mortgage – intimidating.

That was reason enough for me to move in with him.

Being dumped went far worse than I’d expected. I hadn’t really considered that the flat was technically David’s and that if we broke up I might end up homeless, but there it was. He came home and looked like he’d had a few drinks, and he said:

‘I can’t do this any more, Lexi. I can’t take it. You’re too much.’

I looked at what he was wearing – since when had he started wearing a shirt and tie? – and said, ‘Too much of what?’

‘Too much of you. We need to split. I’m sorry.’

We hugged. It seemed very amicable. I felt a small amount of pride in what ego I had left that here I was facing the first big milestone of adulthood – namely, the death of my first long-term relationship – and yet I was still managing to say things like ‘no, no, you’re right, it’s better that we stay friends, that’s the main thing’ instead of falling apart. I felt very fond of him right then, because at least he looked like he regretted us parting ways.

But the next morning, he was back to being the Arctic personified.

‘When are you moving out?’ he said, avoiding eye contact as he did his tie. Navy blue with white stripes. Very corporate.