Trying to convince my friends of the strength of our love was difficult. They were sceptical and didn’t like him. The more they insisted he was bad for me, the more I wanted him, and needed to be with him. Addicted, completely useless without him. Paralysed and cold when he was not around, animated and lively when he was.

I turned into two different people, one for when he was around – the one designed to impress and dazzle. And the one when he was not around – the depressed, deflated romantic, who moped around desperate for the time when he returned to my life like the shining light I was convinced he was. Looking back now, in my cold, harsh prison cell, I can see how awful I must have seemed to my level-headed friends. He was my night, my day, the sun in my sky. I would have and did sacrifice everything for him.

I couldn’t count the number of times I was warned off him, that he would ‘hurt’ me, and I would live to regret even setting eyes on him. Despite everything that happened, I still don’t regret loving him. He made me feel alive and joyous and insane, like I was always on drugs. However, the higher he sent me, the harder I’d trip.

He was a double edged sword, and I was never sure which side I’d cut my finger on each time I saw him.

The day that sealed my friends disapproval of him was a summer’s day, and we were all enjoying a bottle of rose wine in the back garden of one of my friend’s houses. He arrived drunk, with three of his friends. In retrospect, I would call them thugs or yobs, but as I was so enamoured with him, his friends were just ‘jokers’ and to me, immensely funny. They smashed the bottle of wine, and blew their smoke into my friends’ faces. He laughed and I laughed along, not wanting to upset him.

In the haze of the wine, I said something to upset him, because before I knew it, he was holding a shard of the wine bottle against my throat.

I sobered up quickly, and my eyes went fuzzy with tears. I saw my friends with concerned looks on their faces, not sure what to do. I laughed it off, pushed him away and called him a fool. He didn’t retaliate in front of my friends, but I knew, I could tell that when we got home there would be war.

It petrified and excited me at the same time.