‘I can’t track him down to return his family album’: the things our exes left behind that we can’t bear to get rid of

Gwynne’s ex-boyfriend’s photo album. Main photographs: Dan Matthews/The Guardian Photograph: Dan Matthews/The Guardian

Gwynne (left), now 38 and a producer in New York
We met in 2007, when we were both living in New York. I had just moved from Kansas and Paul was a friend of a friend of my sister’s, who I was living with at the time. He was a Brit, working for a totally shady company that went door to door around all the pharmacies in New York City. He lived in an apartment that the company rented for him and three other guys, who spent their days going between pharmacies.