He took me straight home, which was both good and bad. I didn’t even know what it was I wanted any more.

We didn’t speak all the way home in the cab, even though he was holding my hand, gently but firmly. I kept my eyes focused out of the window, looking but not seeing as the raindrops chased their way across the window, sparkling like orange jewels in the light from the streetlamps.

He took my keys and opened the front door for me, standing to one side and letting me go first. I didn’t sit down, and neither did he. I caught a glimpse of his face, and to my surprise he looked so broken that I couldn’t look at him again.

‘I think we should cool it a bit,’ I said. As soon as the words were out of my mouth I felt a flood of relief.

‘What?’

‘I said – ’

‘I heard what you said. I’m just not sure I believe it. Why?’

‘I just feel – I just think I need a bit of space. I want to go out with my friends more. I want some time to myself. To think.’

I sat down then, perched on the edge of the sofa, knees pressed tightly together. I could feel the tension in the air rising like a tide.

‘You get lots of time to yourself when I’m at work.’

‘I know,’ I said, ‘and I like it. I don’t like coming home and finding you’ve been in here while I’ve been out. I want you to give me my spare key back.’

‘Don’t you trust me?’

‘I just like my own space. I like to know where everything is.’

‘What the fuck’s that got to do with anything?’

‘You coming in here when I’m out. Leaving me messages. Leaving that picture of me under the duvet.’

‘I thought you’d like that. Don’t you remember what happened when I took that picture? What we were doing? I remember it. I think about it all the time.’

‘I remember you telling me you’d deleted it. You obviously didn’t.’

He didn’t answer.

‘I’ve been scared, Lee. Since the burglary. I don’t like you coming in here when I’m not at home. It’s as though my house isn’t mine any more.’

There was a pause. I could see him in my peripheral vision, standing to my left by the door. He hadn’t moved a muscle, he’d not taken his coat off. He was like a solid shadow, a black ghost, a nightmare.

‘You want to go back to shagging anyone and everyone,’ he said, his voice like ice. ‘You want to go back to that.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I just want a bit of space, that’s all. I don’t want to see anyone apart from my friends. I just want to – think. To be sure that this is right.’

He took a step forward then, suddenly, and I think I must have flinched or something because when I looked up at him he’d frozen again. His face looked calm, impassive, but his eyes were raging. Without another word he took a step back again, out of the door. I heard the front door open and shut again with a soft click.

He was gone.

I sat motionless for a moment, waiting for something to happen. I don’t know what I was expecting. Maybe I thought he was going to come back. Maybe he was going to come back and hit me, or throw something at me, or yell and swear.

Eventually I got up, went upstairs and got changed out of that stupid black dress with its stupid sparkly bits that I’d already decided I was never going to wear again. It was going in the first charity bag that came through the door, no matter what it had cost me to buy. Along with the red one. I wanted to be rid of them both.

It was hours later, when I was lying in bed still wide awake wondering what on earth had just happened, how it had happened, that I realised that he hadn’t given me my key back.