Naively, I am really hoping she will know. It has been bugging me for a while, a year or so.

I ask Mami what the ex does with everything he knows about me now that he no longer needs it.

He Knows a lot, I tell her darkly. She looks taken aback.

What does he know? Her hands are momentarily suspended in between suds and the weetabix bowls from this morning’s breakfast.

A lot.

She thinks for a while.

Graham and I were married for two years, she says, and we lived together for longer than that. I don’t know anything about his life as it is now. I only know how he used to be. People change.

The ex has not changed. My pen ran out in the silent study room, the only place I can find where peanut butter and banana sandwiches and studying are allowed to happen at the same time. The ex sat down on the other side of the room.

Hey, I called across to him, got a pen? He didn’t answer, stuck his head deep into his bag and rooted. I waded over to him, manoevering an ocean of empty desks. He pulled his head from his bag (I would like to say with a pen between his teeth, but it didn’t happen like that), frowned in the general direction of my larynx and pursed his lips.

So we were back at out separate ends of the table ocean with our heads down, my concentration given almost entirely to making a minimum of noise biting chunks from a Braeburn apple, and at some out-of-place sound behind me I turned with a grin. The ex’s grin collided with mine for a few long seconds before we remembered simultaneously and stuck our heads into our ringbinders.

I would like to think he has sellotaped everything he knows about me into a shoebox and put it somewhere very hidden.

As I am thinking this, Mami stands rooted to the spot staring through the Britta filter on the window sill. Her hands are still submerged.

She said with a hint of wonder, He left no impression! None at all! Shakes her head, and what little impression she might have held onto disappears.