“I’m going away for a while,” he said in his deep voice, and with that one simple sentence, my life, my world was ruined.

Reality dissolved in front of my eyes, and everything seemed to be going in slow motion. Panic rose in my chest, up in to my throat. I didn’t want to be alone. Not now, not ever again. He was watching me carefully to gauge my reaction, but I couldn’t speak. I avoided meeting his eyes, so he couldn’t see my upset and disappointment.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his smile slowly fade, replaced with a frown. He tried to make me look at him, begged me to, but stubbornly, I refused – like a petulant child. I remained staring at my battered, dirty trainers. I was thinking of all those times I’d spent with him – times I’d felt more alive than ever, not the persistent numbness that seemed to invade my daily life. Like demons – he chased away my demons and saved me.

“When are you going?” I asked; my voice weak, threatening to break. My throat hurt as I fought back tears.

He replied that he was leaving tomorrow morning. So soon, too soon. I didn’t want to know where he was going – all I cared about was that he was leaving me, bereft and lonely and cold. I shivered at the thought of not feeling his touch, or hearing his breathing in the dark, next to me.

I looked up after what seemed like an eternity, to find him still frowning at me, his blue eyes searching my face, looking for what, I don’t know. Hope or love. His deep, pearly blues, looking desperate. I stroked his cheek, feeling the stubble graze my palm gently. He shut his eyes, hiding the despair and pain – he breathed in deeply, and rubbed his cheek against my palm. It was moments like this, I felt no one could touch us, like we were spiralling in our universe and dancing to our own tune, that no one else could hear or ever replicate.

He opened his eyes and smiled. Lit a cigarette. I’d never properly smoked before meeting him, but now I was addicted – not only to smoking, but to him. I took it from his lips and breathed in the tar, feeling the fumes surround my lungs. My love and my cigarettes. I could smell his spicy aftershave, as I buried my face in his neck.

That night I shut out the fact that he was leaving in the morning, and just took strength from the knowledge he was there, at that moment, the instant that I needed him. I traced his curves and folds with my fingers, all over his bare body. The body that I knew so well, yet never ceased to amaze me – the bony, protruding ribs, long skinny legs and the sensitive skin of his neck, where those bite marks were just starting to show, purple and blue. Love bites, the pain of our love.

I must have said, “Don’t go” innumerable times, before I finally fell asleep, defeated. No matter what, he was going. Leaving me to my hell and my turmoil.

When I woke, his side of the bed was cold and empty. As was his side of the wardrobe, apart from the suit jacket he was wearing the night we’d met – black velvet, heavy and all-consuming. It hung forcefully on one, solitary hanger.

I padded into the kitchen, with the velvet jacket hanging nonchalantly off my bony shoulders, feeling nothing. The numbness had returned swiftly and with a vengeance. On the antique wooden table lay a rose, a single, withered, red rose.