He is at everything, and I am not going anywhere either

Half a second after I walk through a door I have worked out where he is standing. It is automatic by now and I have stopped trying to switch it off. Eighteen months since we finished, and the honest position is that neither of us is leaving, so I plan around him rather than around any hope that he fades out.

Thirty four, Salford, nine years in. A scene does not split the way a group of friends splits. Nobody takes sides, nobody moves away, and there is no second version of this city available to whichever of us wanted it. So we are courteous, we speak rarely, and both of us have quietly got very good at occupying opposite halves of a room without appearing to work at it.

Somebody new does not have to take my side and certainly does not need a view about him. What matters is that they can shake his hand, be entirely unremarkable for four minutes, and then leave the subject alone on the drive home. Two people have failed that in the past year. One wanted the whole history and one wanted to demonstrate something.

Beyond that I want a long ordinary thing. A standing evening, one person, years rather than a season. Somebody who works out by the second month what I look like when I have gone quiet, and says something about it instead of waiting.

I am not willing to move my entire social life sideways to avoid one man, and I would rather say so now than find out in month four that it was quietly the plan.