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Back at the house, I started clearing out my things.

The main task was getting rid of Bryce's gifts. I wanted them out of my sight. But when I actually started going through everything, I realised how much there was. An entire box, stuffed full.

Bank holiday weekends when he'd turn up by surprise. The two of us wandering through street markets looking at things we couldn't afford. Falling asleep in the double seats at the arts cinema. Magnets and postcards from every city he'd passed through. Birthday gifts he'd made himself — small things, careful things — every year without exception.

I'd lived inside that warmth for years without questioning it. I'd assumed it was real. I'd assumed we'd still be doing all of it when we were old.

What I hadn't known was that Lily had been there for most of it. The market trips. The cinema. The coastline drives he'd taken when he got his licence.

The pottery pieces — a pair of small figures he'd made at a class — had another woman's fingerprints pressed into the clay. He told me it was the instructor's. Later, Lily told me the truth.

It's almost impossible to hold in your head the image of someone saying I miss you over the phone while pressed up against someone else in a hotel room. And yet.

Love teaches you things. The cruelest lesson, I think, is this: some people come into your life not to stay, but to show you what they are — so that eventually, you can stop mistaking the temporary for the permanent.