The List

One. A kettle, descaled. He had descaled the kettle. I want to begin there because everyone begins somewhere else and everyone is wrong.

Two. Four pints of milk, in date, which meant Tuesday, which meant he had gone to the shop on Tuesday and stood in a queue and chosen the ones at the back the way our mother taught us.

Three. A library book, renewed online on the Wednesday. Renewed. For three more weeks.

Four. My jumper, the green one, which I had been accusing him of losing since March, washed and folded on the end of the bed with a note on it that said told you.

Five. Two hundred and eleven photographs on a camera he had not owned the last time I saw him, all of the same stretch of canal, all taken between five and six in the morning across about six weeks, in which the only thing that changes is the light.

Six. A gym membership, eleven days old.

Seven. A reply, drafted and not sent, to a message I sent him in February. It says yeah I'd like that. That is all it says. I sent him a message in February asking if he wanted to come up at Easter.

Eight. The kitchen, clean. Not tidied. Cleaned, properly, behind things.

Nine. Nothing. No letter, no note beyond told you, no explanation, no version of this that anybody gets to hold up and say, there, that is the reason, that is what it was.

People want item nine to be different. They ask me, gently, whether he left anything, and what they mean is whether he left an argument they can follow.

He left a descaled kettle and four pints of milk and a library book renewed for three more weeks.

I have thought about it every day for two years and I have got exactly this far: whatever happened, happened fast, and it happened to somebody who had every intention of Thursday.

That is not comfort. I am not offering it as comfort. It is only the most accurate sentence I have been able to build, and I have built a great many.

The green jumper is in my drawer. I do not wear it. I take it out sometimes and put it back.

Told you.