But she was there, in some flicker of every hour of every day. Her mop of hair, her belly giggle, the way she floated about an inch off the floor, moving like she was made of air, her teasing, the nicknames which became sympathetic vowel sounds and much laughing and cooing against my protestations and then smothering by her curls. Her brain that ran rings round mine, assessing family polemics, leaving the cinema. Her nonsense of direction, peering quizzically at me next to a traffic light. Her sulking, the sulking that did my head in as if the most important thing on the planet and in the history of the world, was her mood. Her dream sleep moaning, eating vegetables with her mouth wide open, ingesting them crunch by crunch as they came in on a conveyor belt, flickering her eyelashes and moaning in a bovine way, the tiny flowers she stopped traffic for to lead her investigations. Her tears in concerts, her hands gripping my arms as I held her from behind, sinking my nostrils into her hair. Her games. At breakfast she became a girl across a bar, half-glancing at me, looking away, looking back, staring down at her egg, coy, blushing. Her elegance and quiet grace. Her wilderness. I just wanna be free she yelled. She was something straight out of the woods, I would never find anybody like that ever again. Maybe I would grow to love somebody new, differently, but never again would I have her precise combinations, her intricacies, her fire. She broke my balls like no-one I had ever known and I never loved a girl more.