There is a some infinitesimal line between grief and self-pity. It’s the difference between feeling the loss and pain, and enjoying its effects on the outside world. The martyr will get more attention, more respect. Rooms will shush as my approach, a chair will be offered first, tea will be made. Everything will be done to make the griever feel like they are precious China that could smash if enough care isn’t taken. And it’s not an impossible thing to imagine, that one could get to like being treated like this.

Like now. My boss, Paul, has taken one look at my face, and shook his head. Like he knows all the ways that fine China can crack or flake. ‘Knew it was too bloody early,’ he says, placing a hand on my shoulder.

I shake my head, to deny, to refuse. But I want to go home. The double mattress needs taking to the dump, and there’s bound to be more paperwork on my doorstep. I hold up a finger, pale against the greying sky through the open plan window.

‘Just let me send one more email,’ I say, pulling the martyr effect to its ultimate overdrive as I stand up. A wave of dizziness folds over me like a warm duvet, and I want to be home, want to close my eyes.

‘No, maybe not.’ I sit down, and Paul rushes off to make some tea.

See. That easy. No quibble about status or right. I am the fine China that is teetering on the edge of the shelf. I deserve to be treated this way.

A taxi is called, and Fran sits with me while we wait. I feel awkward and weak, like I’m being stage-managed. Suddenly I hate being the fine China, hate my weakness.

‘I’m not sleeping very well, you know,’ I say, though I don’t know why. Fran nods, but her eyes are empty. She’s just doing as she’s told. Watch the silly cow that came back to work too early. Just watch her, just in case.

I wave her off - no need to see me to the taxi - and then stumble out into full sunlight, the like of which I haven’t felt since your last court date. There are birds in the air and the scent of green things growing off the park across the road. How is it that I don’t see these things the same way? Did you provide such a filter on all my thoughts that I wasn’t able to see their emptiness?

The answer comes in a flash, a second. No. You provided them with worth. The taxi pulls away, and I sit back, belting myself in. My hand falls to the centre of the back seat, were you would be sitting if you were with me. I steel myself, and look out of the window. I will you to be there, but I don’t look, so as not to break the illusion, so that maybe, just for a while, I can see things the way I once did.

*

I dig out the wine as soon as I get home. Your favourite whiskey glass, the one with the Love is … etched into the side that was a Christmas present, shatters as I grab a tumbler. I look at the glass shards on the kitchen floor with that same inexplicable emotion. The one with no name.

I leave it there, tramp into the spare bedroom, and get too drunk, too quick. Twenty minutes later I’m heaving into the toilet, while the phone rings downstairs. I stay there for a while, watching the water drip from under the cistern, and then the phone stops.

I don’t care. I’m a martyr.

You were too nervous to talk to me at first, remember? How you hung by the wall, hugging your can of lager like it was a life-ring, in a sea of social inexperience. I was on antibiotics at the time - the ironies of a twenty first birthday - and in no mood to dance, or have a go at that highly suggestive game of Twister. The music was too loud, and the living room a little crowded with people I didn’t know. And you rescued me from myself.

‘I hate it when people feel they have to pretend. Don’t you?’

Maybe you meant the cheering at the crotch-to-face game, or the clapping, drinking party guests. It was only much later that I realised you meant me. I knew you through someone, a familiar face in a crowd of strangers, in my shared house.

We ended up in the kitchen and talked for hours.

It doesn’t help that the bathroom is still full of your things. My eyes pick through your shaving gear, a forgotten pocketfull of small change thats rusted on the window sill. Why are they still there? I ask myself. Getting rid of them feels too much like betrayal, a forgetting too far. I can imagine myself old and withered, living in a cobweb-draped house like a modern day Mrs Haversham - but all in black. Or a grieving Queen Victoria with a face like a slapped arse and too any cats. I’ll never throw away your aftershave. It cost too much to throw away, and you’d want me to remember your smell, I’m sure.

I lift my head up, drool trailing from my hand that’s gone numb. I look at the time, wonder if the dump is open, then remember that the car is still in town, in the library car park. The mattress needs to be gone. That conviction is so strong as to be a palpable beat under my skin.

A fucking bed of nails.