Colin,

I miss you.

The flat is hollow without you, somehow augmented on the nights of the full moon. Your overnight absence an imprisonment than a choice.

The dog and I will sit together, both looking as disconsolate as the other. You'll think we're both lamentable, you're the one having the abominable time in the Ministry. To think you could be just in the other room, doing the same.

Would that make a difference? Wouldn't that make our settlement unworkable, your privacy pervaded not by the WCU but by your housemate?

No - I do that typically every day we cohabit, what a preposterous notion. Too much wine at the party, lack of sleep, New Year's Day. An irregular way to see in the New Year, sandwiched in a crowd on the hospital top floor, with a cousin almost twice your age, a set of not quite strangers, and the healer who witnessed the week I lost. But I need it so. These long silent nights, sat up wide awake.

I've saved a bottle of awful champagne, won it in some inferior raffle. When you're feeling human again we'll drink it. You and I, side by side on the bed. sofa bed.

I'll cook you steak, we'll celebrate the new year late. Your return, your new year, put it all behind you.

Maybe this year we'll convince Hannah to be the poster-girl to repeal the restrictions. Maybe if I can convince her to be my wife on Christmas day I can convince her that too! No, that's Hannah, I can hear your shock when I told you all over again.

I still don't quite understand your surprise and… were you upset? I never can quite determine, but somehow things were sharper, clearer on Boxing Day when I watched you watching Doctor Who beside me.

When I don't drink them everything is acute, but I don't like it, I prefer not to perceive, not to observe everything. Well, apart from you, the healer, the tailor… the others. Oh my head.

I must be ill again to write you such letters. What a way to begin a year my friend! I'll be so glad to have you home, even if we both accept its best if I leave you be, I always want to make you feel a little better. To sit in the living room while you sleep on the sofa bed, to be here if you wake with nightmares.

You should share in my addiction, Colin, you don't ever have to dream. Just an inky black void. Its the opposite of waking.

When you return it will be like nothing has happened. The Christmas cards will still adorn the room, the fridge will be stocked, the dog walked, the neighbours nodded to.

I'll watch for you coming. Open the door, speak softly.

I know the routine. Its ours.

I miss you.