One day, years later, my mother would tell me that no marriage makes sense to the outside world because, she would say, a marriage is its own world. And I would dismiss her because by then ours had come to its end. But that was what it felt like, for the minute before we said goodbye outside my parents’ house, Patrick’s arms around me and my face turned into his neck. I hadn’t said I loved him, properly in the way he just had, but it is what I meant when I said, ‘Thank you Patrick,’ and went inside.
