In the beginning there was darkness. This was largely because the windows were north-facing and all the lightbulbs were 60 watt. But they were happy. So ridiculously happy. The bidding process had been fraught, made all the moreso by their severe desire for the property. In her mind, she had painted the lounge a robin's egg blue, replaced the stained cream carpet on the top landing and hung a washing line in the small postage stamp of a garden all before that very first Sunday afternoon open viewing session had ended. Even while their competition still milled around, poking heads into the larder and measuring the drying cupboard doors with armlengths and footsteps, she knew it would be theirs.

Once the keys had changed hands, the old flatmates issued with hugs and goodbyes and the last of the boxes heaved up from the street, they lay glistening, sharing that first post-coital cigarette on the dusty floorboards in the lounge, with spider webs in their hair and laughter in their throats. All the stress of the missives and the move had melted away. Their shared vision for their shared future opened out in front of them like all the light in the universe exploding outward from a pinpoint on a speck of dirt.

And those first seven days were probably the most blissful of her life. Washing the life back into the faded curtains with the radio on in the background and furious kettle noises emanating from the kitchen; standing, arms folded across her chest, and staring for ten minutes at her favourite picture from their holiday in Turkey, finally framed and hanging in their very own hallway; grabbing him and wrestling him to the floor, with the paintbrush, wet and dripping, flung haphazardly on the dust sheet by paint tin. This was it. In her mind, the beginning might have lasted forever. Even now, it's still her favourite place to visit.

And she remembers the day he finished replacing all the light fixtures and installing a dimmer switch. It was amateur DIY at its best but it meant everything in the world. As the candles on the little table in their dining nook flickered, he looked at her, eyes gleaming, fingers on the switch, and muttered his triumphant declaration: 'Let there be light!' And there was. So much light.