She slides another item into the pile, packing it in like she’s stuffing a turkey. This time it’s a discounted multi-pack of kitchen roll. There is no kitchen to put it in anymore. Nor a lounge. Only storage space, filled to the brim, narrow corridors running through it like clogged arteries. There are already six-packs of kitchen roll squeezed into my bulging cavities.

But to her, these are not kitchen rolls. These are softened sheets of grief, flattened and neatly bound up. They cushion her in a comfort blanket of safety. Her heart empties itself of pain by filling me up.

I heave under the weight of it all. The monster inside me is growing, slowly suffocating us. No light can get in any more. Darkness smothers us, the air thick with dust and the smell of rotting food. Rats scuttle through the cracks, floorboards creaking, threatening to send everything crashing down.