Delphine is having a clear out. It’s been three months since her husband left and she’s ready for a fresh start.

She has already filled two bin liners with clothes, dithered over whether to keep her wedding photos (not the professional ones, they cost too much to bin, but the ones the guests took – Delphine and her husband had left disposable cameras on every table. The idea had seemed cute at the time), and got rid of all the novels her mother-in-law bought her as gifts. She’s never read a single one.

She moves on to the cupboard under the TV. There are so many DVDs, so many board games – so many things to not have in common with someone. Perhaps it’s no surprise it didn’t work out.

Behind all the DVDs and games though is a box she’d almost forgotten about. A box full of VHS tapes – of home video footage. But this is not footage of weddings, christenings or birthday parties, this is recordings from the bedroom in the first year of marital bliss. It seems incredible that the man she could no longer bear to lay beside, let alone have inside her, was the same man who let her film all these tapes with a second-hand video camera, but somehow that’s the truth. For the first year of their marriage they made the tapes, in the second year they watched them together, and in the third year Delphine watched them alone. Since then, they’ve been forgotten – the thick layer of dust that coats them is testimony to that.

Watching them now is not an option. She no longer has a VHS player, and even if she could find one, on Gumtree or somewhere, she can’t imagine her therapist having anything good to say about her filling her time watching sex tapes of her ex.

And yet. The thought of the videos alone has made her wet. She slicks her fingers between her folds, finds herself drenched. An idea comes, just before she does. Perhaps she doesn’t need to watch them. Perhaps she could just…

She fetches a piece of A4 paper and a Sharpie. In big letters she writes ‘Free to a good home.’ She carries the box downstairs, leaves it next to the bins.

And then she waits.