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From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Help

Hi Reid,

So if you’re reading this, it’s just possible you might be the only person who can save my life.

Sounds pretty extra, doesn’t it? It feels ridiculous to write it. But if I’m honest, I’m actually kind of scared. I think I might have screwed things up in a big way.

I’m well aware you may have deleted this without even reading it. I’m crossing my fingers that if you have, I was overreacting. That the email wasn’t necessary.

Obviously, things between us ended badly. Worse than badly. And you’re doubtless finding this as comfortable to receive as I’m finding it to write.

But you’re still the one I’ve found myself writing to. I think that’s because I still remember the whole of you, and not just the angry, grieving man who broke up with me.

I remember the man I trusted right from the start.

Not because a colleague told me you were a good guy.

It was because there was no ego when I asked for your help.

No hesitation when you heard I wanted to blow open a human-trafficking ring.

And more than that, because you had a total, dogged determination to help the victims. Even if you never got any credit for it.

I remember you, too, as the guy who bought a seriously expensive coffee machine for his team because they were all unhappy about the crap they were drinking.

One you paid for yourself, even though you prefer Douwe Egberts granules and never used it.

The guy who battled with the building management at his apartment block to get extra recycling bins for everyone so all the plastic didn’t end up in landfill.

And I remember that you never took credit for either of these actions.

I also remember you as the boyfriend who never minded when I was late, or I forgot something, or I made a mess of your place and didn’t even notice.

Even when I got totally distracted by a thing on my phone in the middle of a conversation.

You were the one person I’ve dated who understood it wasn’t that I don’t care. That I do, in fact, care an awful lot.

You understood how I work, I think. At least for most of our relationship.

I used to love the way you’d quietly put things away, or offered to help on my terms. How you seemed to genuinely love watching me get suddenly hyper-focused on something, and would ask me about it when I was ready.

And how you once gently but firmly defended my lateness to Dad when he made a sarcastic remark about it. Nobody else has ever done that.

So I’m hoping that this person is still in there somewhere. The one I met. And that he hasn’t been totally consumed by the angry asshole who hurled abuse at me and then left. Because I’m only going to send this as a last resort. Like, if all is lost.

Let’s just hope I’m right about you, huh?