We’ve seen each other a couple of times this week. Not for any reason in particular. It’s been ok. Almost pleasant, but with a weight. I think I’m ok, but then a wave of sadness hits and I realise that I’m not. Oh! how that wave hurts.

Today he popped over to see his dad, as they’re working together on something this afternoon. The dog went into meltdown as she was so pleased to see him. And he came upstairs, asked first of course. Hugs with the daughter in the kitchen, so good and so hard to see, when I stand by the door with my arms round myself.

I hand him a few more things I have found of his while I’ve been dissecting the cupboard. And we stand in the hall, talking about how cold his flat is and his new yoga class. We are surrounded the whole time by the photographs I have taken over the years of our lives together. Lots of joyful, funny beautiful photographs. Lots of him and daughter, some of us all, some of just us. I take good pictures. They aren’t your average family holiday picture. And I was, am, always the one with the camera. I have recorded so many moments, printed and framed them and hung them on the wall.

There is a new moment. The one where I ask him if he’d like some of the pictures. Because it seems only reasonable. We look at some of the pictures we both know he loves. There are several pictures of he and daughter on Formby beach. We used to go there regularly when we went to visit my mum in Liverpool. A wonderful, sprawling beach with great light and huge sand dunes. The first time, when the daughter was a toddler, I took a photo of him walking with her walking away from the sea. Holding hands, him carrying his big boots, her with a little sandy bum. We re-took the photo over the years – not the bare bum, but them walking together, away from the sea, while she grew to his elbow then to his shoulder.

And I grieve for the shots I’ll no longer take, and for the pictures no longer there. Not just for the picture itself, I could reprint if that were the case. But for the end of that life we had, the moments we shared. I’m saying goodbye to all of that, just in photo form.

The walls will have more gaps – and what do I fill it with now?