He glowered at me and I was aware of a new emotion beginning to emanate from him. Adulation was turning to serious dislike.

At lunchtime I ate a cheese sandwich at my desk, and avoided Joseph’s daggers, reading an article from yesterday’s Guardian on child labour in India until I felt quite tearful. Guiltily I glanced down at my high-street top and pushed away the Dumped proposal in disgust, the limpid eyes of a little boy in the Calcutta sweatshop gazing blankly at me from my desk. I thought despairingly about booking a psychologist to make sure Darren from Wembley would survive once girlfriend Sandra had dumped him live before the nation because he wouldn’t ever clean the loo. Given that he’d also shagged Sandra’s sister three times behind her back, Darren was probably tough enough to survive the ordeal, but I found I’d lost my appetite anyway.

I chucked my crusts in the bin and checked, for the first time in five whole minutes, that my phone was actually working, which of course it was. I was pretending really hard that I wasn’t waiting for Seb to ring, and that I didn’t mind that he absolutely indisputably hadn’t. Then, galvanised finally by my indecision over flying Charlie’s coop, I phoned Naz to ask about a Dispatches programme on childcare that I’d heard was crewing up. She promised to make enquiries.

To compound my misery that afternoon, I was just going into a meeting with Renee and her stylist when Susan rang from Gar’s nursing-home.

‘Is everything okay?’ I asked anxiously.

‘It’s fine, lovie. Your nan’s tickety-boo, honest. It’s just –’

Renee tapped her Cartier watch officiously at me through the conference-room window.

‘I’m so sorry, Susan, but could we talk later?’ I interrupted apologetically. ‘I’ll call in after work. Will you still be there?’

‘Course, lovie. Mustn’t keep those celebs waiting, eh?’

I tried to laugh in agreement, but my guilt at not visiting my grandmother again in the past week was already intense. Susan’s remark only made my crime seem worse.

To me, Gar had signified a peace, a kind of sanctuary, since I’d lost my mother at the age of thirteen, and now I desperately missed the grandmother who’d half brought me up. Part of me feared the vacant look in her eye as she skimmed over me, the feeble smile she sometimes managed. I had to remind myself that she was still there somewhere deep down; that, like a shiny little onion under the browning outer layers of illness, she was the same Gar at heart. I could still just about find a vestige of that sanctuary as I sat in the quiet of her room, and it was vital for both of us that I kept that going.