As I sat on the train back to Plymouth, surrounded by men trying to chat me up, my milk began leaking on my faux-s’uk blouse, scaring them all away. I watched the countryside pass beautiful at the end of spring — and I began on that journey to love Dai less. For months I’d been drifting, crying, lying on my bed in my parents’ house. I didn’t see anyone, I didn’t read, I just lay there staring at the ceiling. As the train rumbled along the banks of the Exe I decided to finish my Ph.D., decided to bring John up alone, to get a job teaching. I made my mind up about many things.

When I got back to my parents’ house I threw away the stained blouse, fed John, phoned Dai Davies’ father and shamed him into giving me the cottage in Noss Mayo. Then I called Exeter University and arranged an appointment for an interview. I told my parents I was leaving and arranged a loan from the bank so I could buy the Morris Minor. A week later I pushed open the stiff stable door of the cottage, with John bawling at my shoulder, and dropped my suitcase in the hall. I had to bring all my belongings from the car one handful at a time, until I found the cradle at the bottom of the boot. It took hours longer than it should have done because it was so difficult to do it alone. Every small task was difficult. When John was asleep that night I had a long bath, the door open in case he woke up. As I brushed my hair, I wiped steam from the mirror over the sink and was shocked by the face that stared back. It was beautiful but so set, so hard. Tuck you,’ the face said, as it thought of Dai Davies.

As I said, every small task was difficult. The larger tasks — finishing my Ph.D., securing a job, getting tenure, publishing — were easier than finding a baby-sitter, shopping, collecting John from school. But I managed it all somehow, my determination fuelled, literally, by the fire of my fury, which burned more fiercely year after year. Every time I had a paper, a text published, I imagined Dai Davies finding out about it, imagined him reading every favourable review. When I was promoted, I thought of him hearing about it. And every time I had sex with another man I imagined his jealousy. Because I knew he would be jealous, in that primal, irrational way we all are. The day I brought Miles back to the cottage and had him in my bedroom I actually smiled at the thought of Dai Davies watching. I felt, in some obscure way, that I had beaten him, as if it were a fight and I had won.

Then came the bomb. As I knew John did, I lay in my hospital bed during those awful, lifeless hours of the early morning, surrounded by people fighting to live, thinking that Dai Davies should come. If not for me, at least for John.