My childhood sweetheart rang. We hadn’t spoken in twenty-five years. He said, ‘Also, I am seeing somebody else now.’ He’d wanted to tell me earlier, but hadn’t been able to come out with it.

My body started to tremble. I said, ‘Can I speak to her?’ but he told me she couldn’t come to the phone. She was out getting a haircut.

A wave of grief rose up in me. This person had hair, hair that needed cutting, and presumably also then a whole head with a brain inside it, attached to a body that was alive.

After the phone call, I sat in a chair crying, and tried to eat a long raspberry bun. I had read that when you’re feeling down you should eat, and this was all I had. Eating the bun was a miserable experience. It grew larger and larger in my hands, and my mouth kept changing its location and soon I was smashing the raspberry bun at my face, hoping some of it would get in. I felt that my childhood sweetheart was somehow in the room with me, watching me trying to eat the raspberry bun and feeling relieved at how things had turned out between us. A part of me still believed that he was realising what was lost.