They met while squabbling over a discarded plectrum on the floor of Brixton Academy on a bitterly cold night in 2001. As the triangular bit of red plastic left PJ Harvey's fingertips and arced over the bored row of security men, one of them lunged forward with an arm outstretched and collided with the other's shoulder, knocking them both to the floor, rolling around between the sweaty legs, scrabbling to claim the discarded prize like two pigeons fighting over a cigarette butt on the platform at Clifton Hill train station.

They stayed down, and after the crowd had dispersed around them and exited into the night, they were still lying amongst the flattened plastic pint glasses, enthusing on what the songs meant to them, and eventually they decided that they would share the souvenir. On a monthly basis one would post the object to the other across the country, sellotaped to the back of a postcard or folded in between perfumed letter paper.

In 2006 when they were old enough to have a civil partnership, they ceremoniously snapped the plectrum in half. Both pieces were placed in specially designed lockets intended to be worn around their necks forever as a symbol of their love.

When they amicably decided to separate in 2015, and kissed goodbye for the final time at Gatwick Airport, the locket necklaces accidentally clinked together as they leaned forward into each other's mouths, and at the same time, a shudder went through Polly Jean, as she sat with an autoharp in her lap on a stool at Somerset House Studios. She looked down at her pale hands, for some reason expecting them to be streaming with blood, but they were completely dry, completely dry, drier than the leaves of an iceberg lettuce at a Pizza Hut all-you-can-eat salad bar.