Today is our third wedding anniversary. The leather anniversary, in fact. I should be commemorating our love with a book-mark or a pair of bondage trousers. I can only commemorate now. Three years is such a short period of time and yet it feels like an eternity. It starts with the happiest day of my life and ends with, well this: me, alone in the house we shared for just three months in Belfast. Alone and under siege from the remorseless weather, drumming, drumming, drumming, like a peevish Zulu nation. I miss you so much, Kelly. Today no more than any other day, the calendar is filled with pointed little dates now. I think of you every minute of every day that I'm not blind drunk or asleep. I don't need any leather goods to remind me.

Life is so very unkind. You asked for so little from the world and you received less. The fact that you never had any children seems to break some kind of cosmic law, there's a universe of wrongness there. You would have been a fantastic mum, as you were an incredible wife. All I ever had to give you was love, the cheapest coin there is. But you took it and you paid it back to me with no little interest! You made me the happiest I have ever been in my life and I love you forever, my sweet sweet girl.