I dump. I don’t get humiliated. That’s for other people. When I was growing up it was always me who sat down with the boy and looked him in the eye – or when I couldn’t be bothered, rang him up – and told him that it was time we stopped seeing each other and all that. It was for my boyfriends, my ex-boyfriends, to go red and feel hurt and rejected. And I’ve never had insomnia. Even in the worst times, or at least until I moved to the country, I slept undisturbed. But in the middle of the night after it, after Danny and Finn had gone, I found myself awake, my skin prickling, my mind humming, like an electric motor that had been left on and was running uselessly, burning itself out. I felt a familiar pressure against my right arm. Not Danny. Elsie, heaving gently, fast asleep. She must have climbed up into the bed without waking me. I kissed her hair and her nose. With a loose flap of duvet I wiped her forehead where a hot tear had fallen. I looked around at the window. The curtains were dark.
