I’d stopped to sniff the warming scent of a pale green, stumpy candle and stared at him as if he’d just asked me if I ever got tired of eating chocolate. ‘You can never have too many candles; everyone knows that.’

‘Well if it makes you happy, I guess. I just don’t see the point in buying things to then set fire to; it’s like you are literally burning money.’ He laughed, shaking his head. ‘Although the question is, are they called Grönkulla or Färdfull or even Knutstorp? I mean that could change everything.’ He put on a terrible Scandinavian accent, like he had for most of the last hour, making me giggle.

‘Actually, they’re called Fyrkantig, but, oh my God, you’re like fluent!’ I teased.

He pushed out his chest proudly. ‘Yup. Oh wait should that be “ja”? Come on, though, I’m starving and you promised me meatballs.’

I dropped a couple more gorgeously smelly candles in amongst the fluffy white cushions, photo frames and other practical and pretty household goods and linked my arm around his waist. ‘Okay, one plate of meatballs coming right up.’ I then bit my lip and looked at our stash. ‘Do you reckon we’ve got everything we need?’

‘We literally have got everything.’ He let out a long groan, which I knew was hiding how much he’d actually enjoyed our jaunt through the huge warehouse that was so enormous it could be its own nation state.

I, on the other hand, had been stupidly nervous about our first couple’s trip here. After all, shopping for joint furniture in Ikea was a rite of passage in any relationship, especially as the last time I’d been here with my ex, Alex, in this ‘Swedish hellhole’, as he’d called it, and we’d left with a Billy bookcase and a blazing row. We didn’t speak for two hours after the shopping trip that I’d previously imagined to be full of excitement at building our home together and not the fraught nightmare of bickering arguments – and that was before we’d even got to the tricky part of assembling the damn things.

This time, everything was different. Ben and I had meandered through the vast shop on our first official visit; we weren’t squabbling over who did the most cooking as we walked through the kitchen showroom, or awkwardly quickening our pace through the kids’ section. It was, well, actually fun. It was everything I’d imagined it would be before that disastrous trip with Alex.

But now, two hours after first stepping foot in here, I realised that Ben’s enjoyment levels were waning. The only time that we could both make it to come here was a Saturday and it felt like the rest of Manchester had had the exact same idea. We shuffled along, behind harassed DIY-ers, screaming children and couples having heated rows under their breath over who had the better taste in curtain patterns, all diligently following the maze of yellow arrows to the exit.

‘I reckon they need to move away from each other before these tiny weeny pencils find themselves wedged some place they shouldn’t be,’ Ben had said, nodding at one older married couple who were glaring at each other with looks so vicious it seemed they might start divorce proceedings amongst the Jeff chairs and Ektorp sofas. For many people, stepping foot in here makes you suddenly realise that your partner’s awful taste in soft furnishings represents all the things you despise about them and that, really, you can’t actually stand each other.

I’d let out a little laugh and pulled him through one of the mystery Scooby Doo doors, a hidden passageway to skip over the bathroom showroom completely, a trick I’d remembered the last time I’d been here when I’d marched off in a huff after Alex had called my choice in bath mats ‘too common’. The rat maze they force you to follow is why coming here is so full of potential pitfalls for any relationship whether new or well established: you can’t easily leave. They lie to you about the exits – well they don’t lie, but in my pissed off state I’d felt like I was stomping around in circles, passing the same bunch of equally harassed people clutching their bright yellow carrier bags like comfort blankets. But this time I was prepared. This time I knew the shortcuts.

‘Let’s never become like them. Promise me,’ I’d whispered clutching Ben’s hand.

We’d found ourselves, quite aptly, in the bedroom section. Ben playfully pulled me onto the nearest perfectly made up king-sized bed, with a duvet cover that would actually quite suit our bedroom, and lay me down on the soft surface.

‘I promise.’ He leant over and kissed me hard.

The tutting of an Indian man examining the nearby hypoallergenic pillows made me blush so I pulled us back to our feet to finish the shopping and get back home, to our own bed. Ikea is not a place for idle browsing and I may have strayed somewhat from the list I’d scrawled out as we’d had breakfast earlier. It was time to call it a day.

‘Oooh, wait. I forgot we need cereal bowls!’ I exclaimed as we moved onto the next section, remembering that the ones we currently had were chipped and, well, just not deep enough for my liking.

‘Okay. Cereal bowls and then let’s get out of here.’

‘Deal.’

Ben’s eyes had narrowed as if he was a character in a video game, some sniper assassin that had been trained to keep their focus on the target, refusing to be drawn in by my ‘oh look, isn’t that gorgeous!’ or ‘we need one of these’ lines as I shuffled through the Market Hall getting carried away by the funky coloured spatulas.

I imagined that in a moment he would take my hand and break into a run just to tear me away from ALL OF THE PRETTY THINGS, called Rort or Skedstorn or even a word with no apparent vowels in, that I couldn’t help but chuck into the crispy, oversized blue bags. I could feel Ben’s amused eyes flick to me as I snuck in another couple of tea towels.

‘Really, babe?’ he asked with a wry smile, faking a yawn.

‘I know, but they are so cheap!’ I took a deep breath. ‘Okay, please get me out of here. I don’t know what’s happened to my self-control!’ I wailed as he laughed and took my hand.

We made it to the self-service checkout section of the shop pretty disgustingly smugly if you ask me, especially with relationship apocalypse

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