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‘How did you meet Ollie?’ I ask, after a few moments of looking. I need a break from the photos, and I am also curious as to how they found each other.

‘Ah, well, I was in Liverpool,’ she replies, leaning back in her chair and smiling. ‘I was filming a piece about the impact culture can have on a city’s economy, and he was a freelance cameraman a friend had recommended. So I hired him, and … well, I finally found my People with a capital P, I guess.’

‘Can two of you qualify as a People with a capital P?’

‘I think so, in this case. We’ve been together for three years now – we live together, we work together, we are happiest when we are together. I know it sounds very soppy for a tough girl like myself, but I still do feel soppy about him – he’s my soul mate, to use a corny phrase. I feel like I’m home when I’m with him.

‘It’s not all been plain sailing. The race thing didn’t bother my mum, or his – but it does seem to irritate a certain sector of our society … and the amount of times we get eyeballed by police, or followed by security guards in shops is astonishing. The way people hold a wee bit tighter to their handbags when they see him.’

‘Maybe that’s because of you,’ I reply. ‘You do look very suspicious.’

She laughs. ‘Well, I did single-handedly empty our local Superdrug of black mascara during my teenaged shoplifting days. But it’s been an eye-opener. I’m sure you’ve had some experiences around disability in the last few years that you couldn’t have imagined before.’

She is right. I worked with kids with special needs, so I had some idea – but nothing quite prepares you for the way the world works when a person is seen not only as disabled, but disposable.

‘Oh yes,’ I reply. ‘Most definitely. All the small freedoms you take for granted, the massive change in the way others treat you. People were always trying to help him.’

‘That doesn’t sound too terrible?’

‘No, of course not – and he never minds someone asking if he needs help. He appreciates that. What he doesn’t appreciate is people who ignore him when he says no thanks, he’s fine. People who assume he is saying no just because he’s brave, not because he’s actually fine. Occasionally they’d even just grab hold of his chair and start wheeling him somewhere – usually somewhere he didn’t want to go. We used to call them the Manic Street Pushers.’

She laughs at the Manic Street Pushers. ‘See, I wouldn’t have imagined that happening – or how annoying it could be.’

As we talk, I am moving the photos around, silently disappointed at not seeing the one face I have been searching for.

‘I do have a few more, if you want to see them. They were taken afterwards, though.’

She is grinning, but also blushing.

‘Why are you going red?’ I ask, staring at her.

She buries her face in her hands, laughs, and emerges again with full flamingo cheeks.

‘Oh no! The curse of the ginger strikes again! I’m sorry … I suppose it’s because sitting here, being with you, is so good. It feels like such a relief. And I say that as an adult now – but back then, I was a kid. A kid who was damaged and a bit weird anyway and …’

‘Are these photos from your stalking file?’ I say, suddenly realising why she’s so flustered.

‘They are! And the fact that I had a stalking file is making me feel like I’m sixteen again, and undoing all my adulting skills …’ She pulls a slimmer file from her seemingly bottomless bag. ‘I took these after, while we were all in hospital. Some were of my mum, while she was in her hospital bed. Some were just of the hospital itself – the doctors and nurses, the signs in Spanish, the canteen. I slipped out into the street a few times as well, and took shots of the shops and cafés and that church on the corner?’

I flick through the pictures, and realise that even at such a young age, she had an eye for composition. She has captured some amazing faces, fascinating tableaux, and has a whole series of shots taken from the balcony that show the view at every different time of day. I line them up next to each other, and it looks like a time-lapse video that’s been printed out.

‘These are really good,’ I murmur, feeling a slight restriction build up in my throat. They are so good that they are making me remember a bit too much. They are making me time travel, revisit feelings, recall sensations. The way the chairs bit into your thighs. The scraping sound they made when you pulled them around. The faint smell of tobacco and car-exhaust fumes and oranges that always hovered in the air.

Most importantly, Alex. I was so confused back then – drawn to him in a way that felt both comforting and dangerous. I’ve told myself, over the years, that I’ve made my choices, and made the right ones. But talking about him, talking about those days, knowing Em might be interviewing him, is re-awakening all kinds of feelings. Seeing the balcony creates a tender spot in my chest, as though I have an actual ache. I knew that this process wouldn’t be easy – but I didn’t expect it to be physically painful.

She is laying more out in front of me, chewing her lip so hard her mouth is all twisted to one side. I can tell from her reaction that these are the money shots. I steel myself in preparation, knowing that if she is tense about how I am going to respond, I probably should be as well.

There are lots of pictures of me, which is a little creepy but also compelling. Me in the canteen, sitting alone and staring into space. Me with Harry, sitting by his bedside, sneakily taken from outside the room. Me with his dad, again in the canteen – during a conversation I don’t remember, but body language I do. Him, trying to appear strong. Me, trying to appear less than devastated.

Then come the ones I know are coming – of Alex. An early one, him in his tequila T-shirt. Later, one of him actually waving at her from his bed, and another of him waving to her in the canteen, his hand a blur of movement.

‘He was always better at spotting me than you,’ Em says. ‘He had some kind of sixth sense, that man.’

She lays out the last few photos, and we are both silent. We are together in all of the pictures, and I blink rapidly as I take them in.

Me and Alex, in one of the hospital lounges. He’s obviously just said something that’s made me laugh, and I am in the process of thumping him on the arm. One of us in the canteen, where we seem to be playing rock, paper, scissors – or rock, scissors, bag as I remember him telling me it was in Sweden.

Another is of us sitting outside the hospital on a small wall, both holding paper cones full of churros we bought from the food truck on the corner. I get an odd tingling in my taste buds – after all this time I still don’t think I’ve ever eaten anything quite as good as the things we bought from that truck.