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Hello—

Who is this—

Look, stop playing funny buggers—

I’ll call the police—

The phone clicks off.

After ten pills, I slip on the sequin top from the opportunity shop. It feels right. If I’m not going to wear it for you…

Then I take everything out of the mini bar. How much would it cost if I drank the lot? Would it matter? Mum would be disappointed if she could see me now, which must be part of why I’m doing it. And you wouldn’t care, wouldn’t know.

After fifteen pills, I pick up the first mini whisky, crack the lid. I’m disappointed in myself. Did I really expect you to be released from prison after ten years and look like you did before? Did I expect you’d still be searching for me? That you’d be repentant?

Yes, I did.

I’ve been stupid.

I swirl a rum and whisky cocktail in my mouth.

I expected you to be better, bigger—to be who you could’ve always been. A night together and we would’ve made things good, found answers for what was lost. An ending. But you’ve moved on. You’ve walked away and left me behind. You are not who you were.

I’ve forgotten to count the pills, and lost most of them in the bedsheets. I drink more of my golden elixir rum cocktail. Itgets dark, but I don’t go searching for the light switch. Objects in the room are morphing into shadow creatures, demons waiting. In the darkness, I dream you come after me. I run on a hot, tarmacked road, and the skin on my feet peels off like snakeskin, until I’m running on bare bones that are crumbling as you come closer. But when you reach me, you speed past. I’m left breathing hard, alone. I can’t catch up.

Somewhere between the sweat, the dehydration and the desert you showed me, between when I said I hated you and when you said you loved me, is when I changed. Back then, you were better; you were real. That’s when I loved you, or thought I did. You were a magician; you made light appear from darkness, beauty from ugliness. And you were beautiful, Ty. You made me feel beautiful too, in a way nobody else ever has.

Do you remember?

The first time I wanted to touch you, you were on the veranda of your desert den at the end of the afternoon. In the gold-dappled light, your skin was the colour of dark honey. I came out from the darkness of that room you called my bedroom and I sat with you. You didn’t say anything, which wasn’t unusual, but you gave me one of your faint, crooked smiles. I looked at your mouth properly for the first time.

And I wanted to touch you.