I make a small puncture to the vein and it is astonishing really the surprise. I hardly feel any pain, a slight twinge, nothing more. I need to feel what it might be like, just a little deeper. And I am all about conviction and I am deeply scared and the Spanish for depth is profundidad and it seems so much more real. I am a tangible being and it is laughable. I am acutely aware now of my fear. It is eating me up. How I long for a cordless hoover but instead ours has a long flex and the suction is bad. It’s terrible. I clean the filter often but it doesn’t make any difference.

I suck in my breath, slowly through my teeth. I add a touch more butter to the mashed potato. I add more salt and pepper. I get a small cereal bowl and in it I mix the Valium from the red ramekin with roughly three tablespoons of mashed potato. I transfer it to a plate and add a pork chop and some broccoli. This is for Jenny. I place roughly the same amount of potato into another small cereal bowl and this time I add the Valium from the yellow ramekin. I divide this on to three separate plates for the children. I add some broccoli to each plate but I only add pork to the boys’. I try some potato with my finger and I cannot taste more than the potato and the buttery saltiness and it is great to be Irish with that smug false belief that we invented the potato and to know that we definitely invented Kerrygold.

I’ll have to stay here. I will not be able to do myself the fullest of damage imaginable. I will have to stay here to explain to them, when they come for me. I could be running. It could be my last run but I am tired of running, running away from the fact that she wants Jerome. It cannot be. It cannot happen like that.

I adore Friday evenings because I can look forward to the big run on Saturday morning. The greatest sensation – free from Graham for two whole days but I am not free with my thoughts. I have my family. I have my family for the weekend and it starts off so positively but it doesn’t always end up like that. Sometimes by the end, I almost don’t mind the idea of seeing Graham again and the thought of this is disarming in itself and slightly sad. And I wonder how this absence from work which I assume should be so good for my soul can dissolve. Somehow it is not enough.