I flick on the kettle. There are three mini bottles of Scotch right beside it, but I will not drink this morning. I have no issue with drinking at 7 am, but I want to be clear-headed at 10 am because today is Thursday. We have our editorial meetings on Thursdays where we pitch ideas to Hyacinth. I want to do well. I look past the amber liquid and out through the kitchen window. It’s open and rain-stained and there are three terracotta pots outside filled with the brittle corpses of herbs or flowers. The sound of the kettle hissing echoes off the walls and the church bells ring in the distance as I reach for my phone and do the thing I told myself I wasn’t going to do anymore.

First, I pull up Google and then I type in: Harrison Daze. If you want to know what haunts someone, check their search history.

I glance down at the results, scanning through the list of links. One day I’m going to run this search and find Harrison has been nominated for a Grammy or something. That will be a dark fucking day. But not today. Today it’s nothing I haven’t seen before. Just articles praising him in ways that make me want to drown my phone in the sink.

I’ve been watching Harrison’s life from afar, watching it flourish – moving to LA with Melody, large scale support tours, photographs with a Beatle – ever since he left me. Every time something else goes right for him, it feels like there is no cosmic justice. It fucks up my entire day. I have to imagine bad things befalling him just to calm down. Nothing life threatening – just, you know, vocal nodules.

And I know I should just stop looking, but I can’t. It’s like a bruise I can’t stop pressing.

But, still, it’s better to watch him through this electronic window than to pick the lock on his physical front door and break in again.

I only did that once, by the way, and only to get some of my stuff back.

People get all judgey when you admit to things like that, but if other people didn’t do similar things I’m pretty sure that YouTube channel for Mr Locksmith wouldn’t be so bloody popular and I’m pretty sure that Amazon wouldn’t have 3976 five-star reviews on the professional locksmith set I bought for the occasion. There can’t be that many locksmiths out there losing their tools. But that’s the thing about a lot of people: they aren’t brave enough to admit they might have darkness. That sometimes they might do questionable things. Instead they sit back, sip on delusion and judge those who do own their demons. But people like that scare the shit out of me. Because those are the people who one day are triggered, see their darkness, get a fright, go postal and end up as the surprise main character in a true crime podcast.