I had loved JP in all of the ways that it’s unwise to love another person. Dido on the pyre. Antony in Alexandria. Bitch in heat. Before I left for university, Mum sat on my bed and tried to explain some matters of the heart, one of her hands stroking the cover over my legs. She seemed confident that I would already know about the sex side of things. Love, she had decided, might be a different matter. I was hot beneath the bedding, and aware that I couldn’t kick it away without her thinking that I was embarrassed.
