Well this is nice isn’t it! You’ve done the front room up with loads of candles. Done a big thing of mac and cheese because it’s the only thing you really know how to make, but to fancy it up a little you’ve pressed it into leftover Gü ramekins and baked it to lava-temperature in the oven; you’ve set the table with leftover red paper napkins from the Christmas party you all had and done a little handwritten menu; you got a big card and some flowers and a thoughtful but small present. Look at you! You can realise that the true galvanising spirit of the universe is here, in this room – just two people who are sweet on each other being sweet to each other – and there’s nothing corny, or cheap, or lame about emotion, about crossing your arms over your chest and falling backwards into the crash mat of love, that the spark of horniness you felt after four drinks and a Harry Kane hat-trick against Panama could actually be nurtured, fuelled, tended until it grew glowing, build a house around it and let it heat it, and now you have a support system and an emotional other and a best friend and a confidante and a life partner, and also someone who will let you eat chocolate-dipped strawberries out of a redacted body part, something you’re doing right now and going to continue to do and will probably do two or three more times tonight until the sheets are an absolute fucking mess. This is nice, isn’t it? This is the true magic of being alive: weaving your fingers through someone else’s, turning to them silent in the blue-black dark of your bedroom at night, kissing them on the forehead, asking if they can pass you a couple of tissues. You did it. You won Valentine’s Day. You won life.

YOU HAVE WON AT VALENTINE’S DAY