My bed isn’t my bed. You bought it aged twenty. Your first adult purchase, to go in the bedroom on the second floor of your mother’s home. I helped you build it. Or, I watched you from the distance you held me at; furtively glancing at the instructions you frustratingly, typically ignored.

It creaked from the beginning. Beneath weight, sex and hot water illness. The metal legs bent in a matter of months. No longer sturdy but it moved with us. To the bedroom on the second floor of our house. It mismatched the furniture and was always a reminder of the childhood we were still loving in.

I still remember the night we met, fourteen years old, drinking Strongbow. Every night, heavy as lead beneath the sheets, I forgot the fairy lights, the teaspoon of whipped cream you kissed from my neck and the mystery of when I’d see…