Once Tash has left, I’m really not sure what to do. I try to sleep, but my brain is racing with what? and how? and the fuck? and I just can’t drop off. I’m also low-key worried about Max coming back and finding me like this. As much as I joke that he wouldn’t notice, he’d have to, surely.

I get out of bed and stand in the bedroom doorway. I feel like I haven’t had the flat to myself for ages. Usually when Max goes to play football on a Saturday, I go round to Tash’s or we go shopping and once a month I go and see my parents. God, my parents. What if this is permanent? How am I going to explain it to them? But it can’t be permanent. It just can’t.

The flat doesn’t even feel like mine any more. The living room – I used to love the living room; it was the reason I wanted the flat, with its huge windows looking out over the rooftops – is basically Max’s gaming room. And wanking room, apparently. Although all the rooms are probably Max’s wanking rooms.

Tea. I need more tea. And I need to stop thinking about Max wanking. I take my mug over to the kettle. It’s got a photo of Max on it – I had it made for him as sort of a joke after our one and only holiday together. We went out on a yacht for the day and I got a photo just as he jumped backwards off the side. His mouth is wide open and his arms and legs are out in a star shape. We were happy then, I think, staring at the mug. Weren’t we?

We were, I think, mostly. I mean, not like all over each other, madly in love, can’t bear to be apart happy, but that’s not realistic. But we were happy enough. A few times we were that couple you see sitting at a restaurant not talking to each other – I remember having a row one evening because Max wouldn’t put his phone away. We had tapas that night. And then there was the night we tried to have sex on the balcony, but the tile was hard on my knees and I grazed my arse on the plastic chair and Max said, ‘For fuck’s sake!’ And I went back inside, got into bed, and pulled the sheet over my head.

But apart from that, it was good, I think.

We got a really cheap deal and it wasn’t somewhere I probably would have chosen – as we were going back to the hotel in the evening, everyone else was heading out to clubs and in the morning we had to dodge piles of sick on the way to the beach. Even so. A holiday’s a holiday. I picture us there now, but I can’t see us together. I can see me at the pool, but Max is back in the room lying on the bed, playing some game. Do they even have game consoles in hotel rooms? He’d probably take one with him.

I can’t picture us out together. When did we last go out together? I can’t think of anything. We must have been out for a meal, surely. My birthday? Max’s birthday? Christmas? I can’t think of anything.

Maybe I shouldn’t give up on us. All couples get complacent, I know that, I’ve read about it in magazines. I shouldn’t expect to be jumping for joy at the sight of him, putting on make-up and shaving my legs before he gets home from work, all that crap. But I shouldn’t be happier when he’s not here, should I?

I take my tea over to the sofa and sit down in front of Saturday Kitchen. I’m watching someone from EastEnders make an omelette, when a phone buzzes on the coffee table. Max’s phone. Next to Max’s wallet. He’s always been useless at remembering to take his stuff out with him. I’m surprised he hasn’t forgotten his keys too. The phone stops vibrating and then starts again and I lean over to look at the screen.

Both texts are from El. I don’t know an El. The first says

and the second says

I’m blinking at the screen, trying to work out if there’s any way these texts could mean anything other than that Max has been shagging someone else, when a third text pops up.

Unless she’s planning to wash his sweaty shorts and make him a moussaka, it definitely seems like Max has been shagging someone else. What a fucking prick.

I’m still sitting and seething – going over the times Max has told me he’s been at football or playing pool with his idiot mate Ollie or seeing some band he knows I wouldn’t be interested in, and wondering how many of those times he’s actually been with her, El – when the front door bangs and Max is back.

I stay very still and he walks over to the sofa and says, ‘Ah fuck.’ He reaches past me to pick up his phone and then calls out, ‘Izzy?’

I want to say, ‘I’m right here, dickhead,’ but I don’t.

He picks up his wallet and takes it with him to the bedroom. I hear him peeing because he never closes the bathroom door. When he comes back through, he’s talking on the phone. ‘Yeah, babe. I just came back for my phone and my wallet. I got a shower at the gym though. Before I got your texts.’

He’s silent for a few seconds and then he laughs, his voice dropping lower. ‘I’m sure you could think of another way to get me sweaty.’

I feel something bubbling up inside me and it takes me a couple of seconds to realise it’s anger. I don’t know how long this has been going on, but it’s too fucking long. I grab a cushion from beside me, lift it over my head, and throw it as hard as I can across the room towards Max.

Max’s face instantly takes on a ‘shocked’ expression. He looks like an emoji. His mouth is perfectly round, his eyes wide.

‘Fuck,’ he says into the phone. ‘Something really fucking weird happened. I—’

I reach over to the coffee table and pick up the empty lager can that’s been sitting there for a few days now and I throw that too. I aim past him – it’s probably about a metre wide – but Max flinches dramatically anyway.

‘I’ve got to go,’ he says into the phone. ‘What the fuck?!’

I think about throwing the dishes that are littering the coffee table, but instead I just pick them up and carry them across to the kitchen, dropping them into the sink with a crash.

Max’s phone is buzzing in his hand, but he doesn’t even look at it. I pick up the empty takeaway boxes, the crisp packets, the copy of The Sun. I take it all back to the kitchen and throw it in the bin.

I’ve never enjoyed tidying up quite so much before.

And Max doesn’t move. He just watches me carry the stuff across the room. Or rather, from his point of view, watches the stuff float through the air to the kitchen. To him, it must look like the bit in Mary Poppins when she clicks her fingers. I click mine right next to Max’s ear and he lets out a yell and legs it out of the flat.