Before everything turned to shit, Jack was my most successful project ever. He was 19 when I met him and as much of a mess as his bedroom. Instead of buying food, he spent his student grant on speed, acid, ecstasy and marijuana, surviving on nibbles “borrowed” from the communal fridge. He always left a regretful note, gracious but with no mention of imminent replacement: “Dear John, I’m so sorry. I took your cheese. Jack.”

I started to collect them. I noticed he chain-smoked roll-ups, went to bed at 9am and drew self-portraits in charcoal on his bedroom walls. I found this endearing, but some of his strange practices were definitely negatives:

— A tendency to recite Nietzsche in inappropriate social settings.

— A disinclination to wash.

— Going barefoot (which was okay in itself, but incurred ridicule from my friends).

— Walking with a chimpanzee-like stoop.

— Holding his feet at right angles.

— Getting stoned to slow down and taking speed to speed up again.

— Refusing to exercise or even walk on an incline.

I considered the positives: he was tall, handsome, gentle and sweet, and his ineptitude was charming. I knew a good project when I saw one. With the maturity of a 22-year-old, I set about the repairs. Five years later, I had a fully functioning boyfriend, ensconced within a highly functional relationship, in which life tasks were assigned according to skill sets. Jack handled the higher issues, deciding which books and films were admirable, who was smart, what was right and – most important – what was wrong. I took care of the day-to-day stuff, selecting our clothes, furniture, housing, careers, friends and social activities. Household bills, naturally, were always in my name.

Thus far, my project had failed on only two fronts. The first of these was the inordinate amount of time Jack spent on writing projects. During a week-long holiday in 1998, he whiled away 35 documented hours writing a two-page letter to his best friend’s mum. My other failure was his smoking. He’d been at it for 15 years and already had circulation problems – a large varicose vein had appeared on his crotch, coiling across his scrotum and up his cock like a power cable.

Achieving this tightly regulated relationship hadn’t been easy. About three months into our courtship, he went temporarily insane and had to be locked up. I drove the 100 miles to the hospital, where I found my new boyfriend hopping round a traffic cone. “Hi, bunny.” Still hopping, he jiggled my shoulders. I asked him what had happened.

“The pigs got me.”

“How did they get you, Jack?”

“Ha, ha. They said, ‘You can do this the easy way or the hard way,’ and I said, ‘The hard way,’ so they beat me up, but it took three of them.”

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