The lampshade above my head is a loaded gun.

Like a mutual acquaintance, it made itself known to me on Facebook through an advert from a second-hand seller in my neighbourhood. I didn’t bother to check the measurements before sending her the money. When the door opened, it was so large I could only see the woman’s feet as she handed it over to me. For all I know, she was laughing behind the thing.

The size of a parish church bell, I carried the lampshade two miles through August hailstorms back to my new house, arms trembling under its weight. Twice, pedestrians had to step out onto the road to let me pass. One of them was nearly struck down by a moped speeding along the cycle lane at 45 mph. ‘Sorry!’ I yelled, a lampshade on legs.

‘Your room looks so cosy,’ said my new housemate Lauren, lingering at the bedroom door two hours prior. Lauren is not to be trusted on such matters. She sleeps in the living room at the moment because her room is too hot and she refuses to buy a desk fan during a heatwave. Says she doesn’t like too much stuff weighing her down.

Because a solitary, swinging lightbulb is enough to make anybody miss kitchen drawers brimming with screwdrivers and batteries and half-finished packets of antihistamines. Enough to make anybody miss Saturday mornings spent hoovering dog hair swallowed by the carpet. Enough to make anybody miss the aroma of citrus bleach mixed with mildew, three puffs on a blue inhaler, schools of silverfish swimming round the bed, and the rumbling voice of a sister through the floorboards telling me I ‘surely must have other places I can stay.’

Even on tiptoes, I couldn’t reach the lightbulb from my bed. It took two laps of the house, gathering any cushions and pillows I could swipe from my new housemates, to raise myself anywhere near the cord. To my frustration, the lampshade fitting was too large for the bulb anyway. Using a piece of cardboard and a roll of parcel tape, I rustled together a provisional fixture. Another stopgap.

A room this size asks too much of me. Previously, a couple of family photos and a peace lily might suffice. But something about these short-term sublets compels me to populate every surface, corner, every recess with soft furnishings. Anything that, in lieu of an actual paper trail, proves I live here.

Soft furnishings. Soft my ass. My dress tore in two separate places just trying to get the lampshade above my head, one of them trailing a scratch across my chest. Although the body of the thing is the clumsiest part, with golden-brown fabric stretched over a thick-set metal cage, it is the streams of French glass beads that caused the most grief. From a distance delicate, up-close one can see how they are attached to the structure on ragged wire hooks that have become disagreeable to the skin in the decades since its construction. A two-metre drop from the ceiling would surely puncture the mattress.

3am. I lie in bed, skyward-facing. Unable to sleep, the outline of the lampshade hovers gently above, the beads dancing in brownian motion against those imperceptible, high-ceiling currents. My new housemates are out together. And tonight the foxes outside my window carry on their business with uncharacteristic discretion. If I strain my ears and hold my breath, try to tune out the tinnitus and the hum of the fridge, I am sure that I can make out the sounds of cracking as the tape peels away from the wire. Perhaps I am imagining it. I shut my eyes and try to catch some sleep.

One of these nights, my home-made fixture will fail, the tape will unfurl, and the lampshade will come loose from the ceiling. And that will be it for the two of us. All I can do is wait. In the meantime, I daren’t turn on the lightswitch, for fear that any heat generated from the glowing bulb might melt the glue and accelerate the process. So I live these long evenings by candlelight, barely able to see under the shadow of this enormous lampshade. An act of service for a place I christen home.