‘Your whole life is a game! You’re like Peter Pan or Picasso. The puer aeternus. But I’m glad to know what I know. To be what I am, in this painful age of personal enlightenment.’

With that, I turn and walk out, out from the dark theatre into the daylight.

She’ll follow me, I know she will. And when she finds me I will be ready.

Outside, it is not sunny, it is overcast, but it might as well be the height of summer. It feels as though a big light has gone on after so many months in darkness. I’m like a critter that has shed its skin and come out sturdier.

SOHO SQUARE

I look at my phone. Suzy has posted the picture of the shoot already, with the caption:

Such an honour to be here at my paramour @ArtWilson’s shoot for his next exhibition exploring motherhood with remarkable women like Carmen #scarsandgirls #motherhood #stretchmarks #ageing #bodyinspo

It looks pretty good in black and white. Iconic.

I type:

Must be plenty you can relate to, yuppie mum of the year – is he going to do your C-section? #OWNYOURTRUTH

I stare at the comment. Like it is a little draft missile, lined up, ready to fire. Boom, Suzy Brambles, down you go.

And then I delete it.

And then I mute her. Not angrily, but because I know there will never be any good feeling for me now in looking, and there probably never was. This is a private act of sanity. There’s a sign pointing towards her in my mind, a big old sign carved out of an oak tree, and it says: Only Trouble This Way Be >>>

I hold my phone close to my temple and imagine tumours blooming inside.

When she appears at the far gate, it is like a reckoning. Like my own death has caught up with me. I stare at her and she stares back. The air between us crackles. She starts to walk over.

I fantasise about saying it, standing up and screaming it: I HAD A MISCARRIAGE. I watch her fling herself to the ground and beat the earth with her fists. NOOOO NOOOOO NOOOOOOOOOO! I watch her weep for the grandchild that will never be. For her daughter’s shame and agony. Why didn’t you tell me? Because you’re a grief leech! A misery vampire! I watch her tear her own hair out and hurl it towards me in bloody clods—

She sits down next to me. I look at her but she doesn’t look at me now – she looks dead ahead. She is everyone who ever loved me, everyone who ever left me, everyone who ever admired me, everyone who ever ignored me. She is a Bloody Mother Fucking Arsehole, as the song almost goes.

‘I know what you must think of me.’

I see her wringing her duchess hands. The blue polish is chipped on her thumbnail.