In summer, our room was like an oven. When the afternoon sun shone like a spotlight on our wall, we stripped down to our underwear and drank iced tea.

We bickered over who’d used the last of the ice cubes and laughed like maniacs while we dripped cold water on each other.
We didn’t have much. A bed with a sagging mattress, a sofa, a chipped table and two chairs with uneven legs. The sofa was my favourite. I’d spotted it in a second-hand furniture store and dragged you inside to look at it. You wrinkled your nose in disgust. “It’s filthy! God knows who or what’s been on it.”
“It has character!” I protested.
“I’m not sitting on it. I’ll catch something nasty.”
“Please, let’s get it, I promise I’ll fix it up!”
Your brother helped us collect it and the three of us managed to get it up the narrow staircase in our building. It was too big for the room and sat there, brooding, like a paisley pattern toad.
The sofa was the centre of our small world. We watched soppy romance movies and you always denied it when I caught you crying. ‘Just some dust in my eye! Probably from this sofa!’
We shared bottles of cheap red wine, hot buttery popcorn and ham and cheese toasted sandwiches. I got mad at you when you dripped melted cheese all over the cushions. You shrugged. “I thought you were going to re-cover them.”
I liked the colour of the sofa, even though you insisted that just looking at it made you want to throw up. “It’s like some crazy artist threw red, green and yellow paint all over it and then forgot to come back and finish it.”
I remember the day we broke up. It was a scorching hot summer and you’d been cranky for weeks. One afternoon, when the sun lit up the room, you said, “I’m tired of living here. I’m sick of the heat and I hate this revolting sofa!”
I guess you were tired of me too because the next morning I waved as you drove away in your brother’s car. You didn’t even look back. I went inside and cried myself to sleep on the sofa.
Today, I drove past where you and I once lived. The building’s been knocked down and there are townhouses in its place. I wonder about the people who live there. I’m sure their furniture is new, clean and boring.
I drove away and told myself it was the sun in my eyes making them fill with tears. Not the memories of you and a paisley pattern sofa.