We carry on amid the chaos, pretending it’s outside us, over there…somewhere. So we make Plans. Plans are for the future. Plans are good. We should all have Plans. But we live every day as if death only turns up at other people’s bedsides.

In the beginning I didn’t have to remind him about cards, or dinner plans, or what anniversaries meant. We didn't care. Later I did. Later still, I stopped.

You’ll never be her again. You’ll never have that same sparkle in your eye. You’ll never feel that same love in your heart, the kind that fills you when you’ve met the person you want to spend your life with, and they’re here next to you, holding you in their arms. When your soulmate dies, and you have to carry on with the rest of your life, it does something irreversible to you.

Over the years, a particular kind of rage begins to settle in you: petty, feral, and fierce. It’s the voice that wants to choke the person in front of you in the queue with a bag of Maltesers because they’re taking too long. The same rage that wanted to smash Mr. Soft-Top’s phone into breadcrumbs. It sounds ridiculous until you realise the Maltesers and Mr Soft-Top aren’t the problem. They’re just the final straw in a world that’s made us swallow too much.

How do you cope with the death of someone you can’t live without? Honestly? You don’t. Life feels impossible. Unbearable. You feel like the pain is going to kill you. Actually going to kill you.

To my youthful and inexperienced eyes, Jordan Knight looked like a gorgeous Italian man had eaten James Dean and then birthed a beautiful hybrid Adonis. (Jordan’s Canadian, as it turns out, but this was my fantasy after all.) Now, nearly forty years later, as I search for him on Google, Jordan Knight just looks like just another bloke called Dave…and I wonder if I might finally have a chance.

The days roll into each other. I try to keep myself busy with errands and overdue decorating. I’m currently on my eighth coat of Forest Green in the hallway. I attempt my usual precision — he hated decorating, never had the patience — but in the end I’m just slapping it on like a toddler at playgroup. Still no word from the coroner or funeral directors. Apparently, there’s a queue to die. He would have found that funny.