It can be a daunting prospect, getting to know someone. Cousins and birthmarks and old relationships and the songs they like and the movies they hate and the places they like to go to think. It's exhausting. Then all of a sudden the relationship ends and it's like you've learnt a language to a country you're never going to visit again. What use do I have from knowing that one person's favourite colour, or what their . . .

A story from oh comely issue ten. When I turned eighteen, I had a joint party with my grandma who was turning seventy. The anticipation was tinged with disappointment: it was my eighteenth birthday and I could only think of five people that I wanted to be there. I was sure that my grandma, who had been alive for so much longer, would have more friends . . .