One day the earth shook and all our pictures fell to the floor, heavy and hopeless as the rain in November. And yes – of course I tried to pick them back up again, but all I got was broken dreams and same old promises which had never been kept.

It feels very empty now without the pictures. Too empty. But sooner or later I’ll find some new ones, I guess, and you’ll find some too. Because isn’t it how life goes? New pictures create new problems, and before you know it, I’ll be driving away again, sitting by myself in the car for hours upon hours just to listen to the radio.

’It was a mistake,’ you always said, innocent as a broken record. And I understand that we’re not perfect – yes, of course – but to give up on the stories that we had chosen for our walls? That’s really something. I mean they weren’t just pictures, and they certainly weren’t just walls either.

So, what if this time we chose to display all the mistakes instead, cover the whites with tears and thunderstorms? Because what’s the worst thing that could happen in the case of another earthquake? I’m sure that a shattered mistake would be something like a sprouting seed in springtime. I know you believe it too. I know you, and you know me.

And some day we’ll have our own little garden – just like the ones they have in all the novels and fairytales, beside an old cobblestone house standing by a small winding alleyway, hiding itself in the peace and pastel-green quiet of the English countryside.