Dan bent her head over my nails, my hands resting on her knee. As usual, slightly amused by my ineptitude, she’d offered me an out. ‘”Do want me to paint them?” she asked as I dropped the polish brush again, swearing. I assented and put my hands into hers. It was nice to to sit so close, comfortable just existing, touching, talking together. And nice to be fussed over.

I sat in her grip for 15 minutes as she did two coats of fluro pink, and another of clear varnish. I occasionally glanced at her painstaking painting, rotating my fingers on request, while we chatted about, well, just stuff. Vee sauntered up, balancing her long skinny legs on a pair of teetering heels, and told us a story about a mug trying to rip her off, widening her eyes and moving her body to emphasise the funny bits. We laughed. Bell sat quietly next to me, reading her mail, subdued after a lengthy hiatus from Gatehouse she’d slunk back in quietly to sit with us.

And in the midst of it I thought, for the first time, of the hole that would be left when I finish the project – for me. How much I’m going to miss when I leave. Since the start I’ve worried how it’s going to be for them to have yet another person walk out of their life, and have spent time planning a soft and slow escape route. But today, as Dan held my hands, I realised that I don’t yet know how I’m going to leave my new friends. What my evacuation procedure is going to be for myself.