Sometimes I want to tell you that I want to go back to the way we were but I'm afraid to open this door to a room full of mirrors showing us freakishly distorted reflections of our former selves, disfigured by all that happened since.

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I stare out of this window. The sun comes up. The sun goes down. One minute it’s raining. The next minute it’s dry. Briefly a rainbow brightens up the dull grey sky. I stare out of this window, sixteen stories high. I see the whole wide world. And nobody sees me. Story of my life.

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I couldn’t quite understand her. Did she say ‘hello’ or ‘hell no’. Ever the optimist, I chose to believe the former. That would be forevermore the misconception/lucky guess on which our relationship would be based. Thank god it was sunny that day.

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So for one evening I borrowed her smile. What could go wrong I thought? It turned out that her world would quickly collapse without the vital support of an ubiquitous all-powerful smile. Mid-way through my important dinner-date – the occasion of our rent-a-smile arrangement – she called me to have it returned, post-haste. I ate desert by myself, wondering if someone would sell their smile permanently.

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And I said I was sorry, like so many times before. I apologize so often that the word sorry has lost all colour and all weight. It has become an empty shell of a word with a cavernous echo that keeps on coming back. You must be wondering when things will change.