Yesterday

Cleaning your apartment is boring; cleaning your apartment that you don't live in anymore is double boring; cleaning an empty apartment with your ex-boyfriend that you were once building a life in together is just awful. There's a new couple moving in soon. I hope they're miserable here, I think, as I hoover under the bare beds. I hope they break up! I hope they both get hurt!

"Do you want these?" he asks me, holding up a packet of condoms he finds in a drawer. I don't even answer, just glare at him. No, I don't want the horrible condoms that were handed out at the festival we went to last summer. What am I going to do with them? Make mint-flavoured balloon animals?

"What about this?" he asks, holding up a fridge-magnet. "Do you want this tacky but meaningful Betty Boop fridge-magnet that I bought for you that time in San Francisco when we felt we were really, truly in love with each other?"

Well, he doesn't say that, in fairness; he just holds it up and I glare at him again.

"No, I don't want that," I sigh. "What am I going to do with that kind of crap? Take it all the way to Hollywood with me?". And I say that word, Hollywood, just like that in italics, as if to show him hey, I am going places! Without you! Boo hoo! But it just sounds stupid, and he quietly drops the Betty Boop fridge-magnet in the bin.

"Well, I thought you might at least like this," he says, and I turn around, about to give out again, when I see he's holding up our old jar of coins from the bookshelf. "I thought you might want to give it to a homeless person," he says. "You were always going on about doing that one day."

I take the jar off him and turn it around. I can see euro coins — there must be at least 50 quid in there! And it's true, I am always talking about one day dumping a load of cash into the hands of a homeless guy, and then watching the happy smile on his face as he picks up his blankets and hurries off to buy some crystal meth.

"Well, thanks," I say, reluctant to come out of my sulk, but melting a little despite myself.

"Do you want this?" I ask him, holding up an old toenail clipping that I find under the bed and waving it in his face, as a warning not to ask me if I want to keep anything again. He backs away, and laughs, and then I laugh, and then we have a very long, long hug, and I cry for a while, and he holds me very tight. I wasn't expecting to be sad today, I tell him, spilling tears all over his shoulder. And he knows, he understands, he says that he felt sad earlier, too. And I don't want either of us to be sad, so I hold up a comb that I picked up for him in the supermarket once and sing into it, to the tune of that awful Coldplay song: "Look at this comb, I bought this comb for yoooou, and all the things you doooo..." and we laugh again and he suggests that we stop this stupid cleaning stuff and go for a pint and I think yes, let's go for a pint, let's go for a final pint now that this chapter in our lives is closed.

And as the evening sun shines in through the windows of our old apartment I remember how there was a time when we were pretty happy here, together, nesting and stuff, but that it never really felt right somehow, and all of a sudden I hope that the next couple who live here are really, truly happy together. I don't want people to be miserable. We're moving on, we have good lives, I want other people to have good lives, and I feel good feeling good that other people might feel good too.

And then he says, shit, it's nine-thirty already, and he can't go for a pint after all, because he's late for pints with... with someone else. And that's when I realise it: he's started seeing another girl. And he nods, cautiously, yes he is. And it doesn't matter that I knew this was coming, that I've been waiting for it for weeks now, avoiding the topic because I didn't want to know, but now, all of a sudden I do know, and it floors me; it hits me like a ton of bricks. And that's all I can say about that right now.