It can be done gently; softly. It doesn’t have to be a sudden, violent jolt. The other person doesn’t even have to be aware of it happening, until later – maybe months later – they walk along a crowded pavement and stop, suddenly, realising they are alone. Like a sick child it is possible to cradle them, lull them to sleep with whispered rhymes before lowering their head to the pillow. Sit for a while, smoothing their brow; let them think that you are there; wait for the breath to ease, then creep from the room to a hallway where suitcases wait faithfully and train tickets are impatient to be punched.

These subtle gestures; this determined subterfuge. Slowly it can all be engineered. Let them see your eyelids close for just a few seconds too long, as they recount a favourite story at dinner. Turn your back to them at night: a door, closed to their embrace. At morning leave a dent in the pillow; let there hand search an empty space.

Most of all forget the past: your shared past – or at least pretend to forget. When they ask, ‘Do you remember so and so...?’ just look up from your book and say that no, you don’t recall. For a moment their mind will be thrown, like starlings disturbed by gunshot. Then, recovering themselves, they say, ‘Well, it was a long time ago,’ and you agree, smiling, returning to your book. Slowly the past can be dismantled; each memory wrapped in anonymous brown paper: gifts returned to a forgotten donor.

Rooms too can be dismantled, gradually, over time. Sentimental treasures can be lost or ‘accidentally’ broken. A clumsy, inherited piece of furniture is banished to the attic; pot plants are allowed to die; a favoured photograph absent from the sideboard. Then one day they notice the shadow on the wall, where a picture once hung, the wallpaper turning to dust at their touch and they realise that you are gone. What furniture remains sits silent and sullen, waiting for them to leave. And so they pace the room wondering, whispering to themselves:

‘When did it happen? At what point did it end?’

It happened whilst you were asleep, my love. It happened whilst you were laughing at an obscene joke they never found funny. It happened on that long, silent car journey. It happened when their lips remained sealed against your kiss.

But most of all it ended last night,when softly they sang you to sleep. Don’t you remember being cradled in their arms; the cool of the pillow on your cheek? That gentle whisper in your ear: over and over you heard it repeat , repeat, repeat.

Surely you remember that word: their final, insistent hiss?

‘Yes, I remember it now...... I remember that word……it was Goodbye.’