At last.

I ran down and yanked open the gate – and stopped short. A man was dragging a wheelie bin out of a clever little side gate by the flats next to us; a man I didn’t recognise – cropped greying hair and a younger face, takeaway bag by the gate.

‘Late for a curry.’ I went for nonchalant, glancing up the road.

‘Never too late for a Chinese.’

‘Chow mein?’

‘Peking duck.’ He swung the bag up to sniff. ‘Smells amazing.’

‘Oh.’ I watched the bike move off. ‘Not a fan, to be honest. Thought it was my daughter, coming home.’ How easily the lie came.

‘Kids, eh? Mine are long gone, thank God.’ He grinned. ‘Don’t miss those sleepless nights, I must say.’

I was suddenly conscious of my disarray: rolled-up track pants and an out-sized T-shirt that had once belonged to Rex – announcing I was a Winner across my unfettered bosom. And if Rex saw me out here, chatting to some stranger…

‘Fintan Kavanagh,’ he offered a hand. ‘Fin.’

I didn’t take it. ‘Melissa.’ I was backing up the path now. ‘I… sorry, it’s just getting so late.’

Upstairs, colour still suffusing my face, I lay down again, more stiff than before – if that was even possible. I didn’t remember ever seeing him before on the square, this man with his flint-blue eyes. He’d had a look of that foxy grey-haired actor – the name escaped me – and an accent out of Ireland somewhere.

Sleep, Melissa, for fuck’s sake. I clenched my fists and squeezed my eyes shut.

Five minutes later I opened them again.

Got up, took some Nurofen.

Lay down. Counted backwards from 1,000, got as far as 923 and lost my rhythm.

Rummaged through the bedside drawer; tried not to notice my hands shaking on the lid; drank the rest of the bottle of Night Nurse.

For the period pain, of course. It would help the painkillers work quicker.

Glanced out of the window again. Nope, nothing.

Back in bed, the inside of my eyelids were imprinted with an image of the man called Fintan, standing in the gloom by the flats, smoking a cigarette and texting.

But even I missed the car dawdling outside the new house pull off from the shadows of the old tree, past the electric gates with the monogram traced into them, and into the night.

Ruby

Five streets back from the square, high in the block on the corner of the main road, sleep evaded me. However physically tired I was, the shame that had searched me out earlier in Nella’s kitchen licked relentlessly at my edges, until I felt I might dissolve into a puddle of residual despair over Jonny.

I thumped the pillow mercilessly, but it was no use.

The hardest lesson I’d learnt over the past two years: grief doesn’t stop the world turning, even when it feels like it should have stopped dead.

The sun still rises and the moon still shines; the grass still grows and the children are still hungry; the bills still need to be paid and the pots washed – even when you feel like everything is over.