I have had a fortnight on the couch in Hammersmith to recover from Croatia, which is to say that I have had two solid weeks of bad sleep, slightly too much red wine in the evenings, and the kind of long quiet days where the brain finally starts to sort through what it has been carrying. What I am ready to write, today, is the part of the story that comes before Croatia. Not the actual breakup — that one needs another month and probably another draft and I am not yet up to it.

I have been back from Croatia for two days. The tan is fading, the cuts on my shin are scabbing, and I am sitting on my friends’ couch in Hammersmith trying to work out the kindest possible way to write down what was — by some considerable distance — the worst holiday of my life. A bit of context, because the post will not make sense without it: Josh and I split up in June. I will write properly about that another time, because it deserves more than a paragraph and I am not y