Paige is halfway through telling me how she met her absent fiancé, when she pulls out a large, grey, plastic bag and dumps it on the coffee shop table. Then the softly spoken 24-year-old pulls out a wad of paperwork as thick as a PhD thesis.
As she thumbs through it, she gives me a running commentary. “These are my payslips, these are P60s, these are my contracts from my jobs, these are the bills they said they never saw, two council tax ones, this is his birth certificate, here’s proof he has no criminal record, that’s my birth certificate, this is his English exam certificate, these are all the birthday cards, anniversary cards, Valentine’s cards, this is my wedding dress – it’s been sat in a shop for about a year – this is my statement and a copy of my passport, statements from friends and family, one from my stepdad as well, then here comes the photos.” She pauses, but she is only halfway through the stack. I glimpse printouts of a couple, beaming at the camera. “I spent months putting them together. They are all in different places, with different people.” She sighs, and rolls her eyes. “After 700 photos, I thought, do you not think…” Her voice trails off.
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