Whenever I get sick, I miss you the most.

Mum once said she always knew when I was unwell because it was the only time I called home. I have been sick a lot lately.

But this time I wonder, where are you? No longer London, and not yet Canberra.

And now, once fleeting memories of what you were to me gain weight in my mind. Wandering the Rye, teasingly pulling his curly hair, lying together on the futon in my little upstairs bedroom and watching the crows through the foggy skylight.

Yet here I am. “That fountain at Lake Burley is pretty great though, hey?” He laughs. And he is right. The photo tagged at the Commonwealth Bridge on my new friend’s Instagram is almost the same as my photo of the Millennial Bridge in London. Posted on 9 January 2016, captioned “home”.

Every now and then you are with me again. This time in the vast blue sky and the warm sun. While hanging out clothes on a line that reminds me of holidays and drinking pints at the Old Canberra Inn, I feel like I am in a Heidelberg painting, the kind I learnt about at uni.

And my knee, an inch from touching the knee of the man next to me on the bus, the same way my knee used to touch his on the bus home to Peckham. He would speak to his cousin in French, his phone on loudspeaker upside down in his top pocket.

Now I sit on a silent bus. Ten hours apart, the ticks on my Whatsapp messages are still grey. So I call Mum.

“How are you, possum?”

“Okay, been feeling a bit sick.”