I am neither black or white. I am a shade of grey: steel grey, reflective and resilient. People talk to me and their words bounce back to them on a trajectory that takes them by surprise so that they see themselves in a way they had not expected. I am a good listener.

Through other people’s stories, I tell my own.

Philadelphia was exactly as she had expected: a little bit "parochial" she said, with a weighty emphasis on the historical and potentially tedious for the twenty-something traveller. But the tedium was never realised, because that first night in the youth hostel she met Ralf. Tea-drinking, card-playing Ralf who I would come to know as though I had been there myself.

The two of them set about creating their own world, utterly removed and completely unsustainable. They did not deliberate, it just occurred or unravelled; a reluctant love story and a compelling symbiosis that would, at first, leave them reeling and then settle into a curious relationship that crossed countries and cultures. After a while it didn’t preoccupy either of them overly, it just existed like a dormant volcano. It was tenuous, insofar as neither party was consciously committed, yet it persisted as surely as the breath in my lungs.

The clarity of perception that another can have of oneself is sometimes frightening, haunting. Someone once said to me of a childhood acquaintance, “You know, I don’t even like him, but instinctively he knows me”. I imagine that the words of this friend, unknowingly wise, sum up the bond between these two people.

I believe she did never really liked him, she told me as much, hissing the the words conspiratorially, leaning forward, eyes narrowing in confusion, her free hand pulling ratty trails of brown hair tightly behind her ear, the other hand compulsively flicking a roll-up against the ashtray. Strange, I thought at the time. Strange that as you say this I find myself in the same predicament: disgust for her rose in me like bile at her physicality. For such a sleight girl she has a cloying presence; my intemperate obsession for her swings violently between abhorrence and desire.

This is not my story. It is her recollection seen through the eyes of someone who does not know how to be objective. I get entwined in these recollections as time goes on but I can’t help that I became part of her vortex. As I listened over the years to them both, I see that their recollection of events differ wildly. I know that she censors some of her memories, but whether it is to protect her or me, I am not certain. So I take her words at face value. I can do no other. But I believe she has never been completely honest with me about anything. She says “to be frank with you…” far too often for it to have any cogency. Just because I hold the sanctity of truth as the most profound of values does not mean others should do the same. Everyone’s priorities are different.

I digress.

I digress because I want to present a rounded picture of what happened. I want to show you every conflicting part of this right now so you walk through this story with your eyes open. I do not want to suspend your disbelief or use any narrative tricks to warp your understanding. For a start, I am not that clever. If I am honest – which I like to be – I want you to see her as I have done; I want your support, I want you to collude with me. Then perhaps I can be right. Maybe then I can suspend my own disbelief.

But I cannot control you.

At the very least, I have told you enough about myself for my voice to sing its disquiet throughout our story. While I write about ‘her’ and ‘him’ you will see that I am massaging an angry heart and exhausting an illogical grief that contorts my pathetic body.