Then there was the stationery cupboard, her sewing kit and bric-a-brac box. Stuff I know I’ll need and use but that have so much of her pumped throughout them. Even the bright yellow tool kit is the one she brought with her when we first moved in together. It’s all her. At some point I have to reclaim it as my own.

I sigh, my fingers forking through my growing hair and rubbing at my scalp.

God, I must look awful.

With my phone still in my hand I lift it up and click through to Instagram, heading straight to Pia’s feed. As her smiling face pops up I’m hit with a fresh pang of longing. You wouldn’t have known she was as ill as she was. I don’t think I really did either. She had this ability to just go for it and push through, never wanting pity or for someone to say she couldn’t do something. So she took on every adventure she possibly could. I’d hate to say it, but her diagnosis made her more fearless and headstrong. More adventurous. And not because she wanted to make the most of every second of her life and tick things off her metaphorical bucket list. I think it was actually because she couldn’t bear to hear ‘no’ any more. If she was up and doing then people wouldn’t treat her like she was sick and tell her she mustn’t do something – because she was doing what even those doctors, specialists and nurses couldn’t. She didn’t look sick, and so we both just assumed she’d got the upper hand of her illness. But cancer isn’t a game and it’s not about winners and losers. There is just life or death. All or nothing.

I shake my heart of the hurt surrounding the final posts made to her account – one I had to post to report the news – and scroll down, heading to happier times, before cancer entered our lives and changed everything.