He drove us back. I got out, floated down the path toward the house, like one of those cyclists who get back on their bikes after an accident, not realizing yet the bones they’ve broken. Inside, I sat down at the bottom of the stairs. I wanted to call Em. I wanted Em to come and hug me, and make me tea and tell me it would all be all right. I would want the same thing a thousand times. I want it now.

There was a knock a couple of minutes later. When I didn’t open up, Marcus pushed the letterbox open with his fingers and peered through to confirm I was there. Then he told me to find a new job, to do it quick, and not make him get his uncle to sack me.

CHAPTER 14

GENTLEMEN’S CLUB

After my night at the bar, the inevitable episode. I woke curled around my laptop, next to the tail end of a ketchup sandwich and the burned-out telephone box. It went downhill from there. Episodes could begin innocuously enough. I would get the idea that I deserved a duvet day as reward for my long hours and professionalism, a bit of telly in bed with a bowl of ice cream, but they always ended the same way: binge-watching series or films while binge-eating whatever was in the house, first addressing the fridge and cupboards, eventually the freezer.

One screen was never enough, so I’d have the tablet open as well, usually the browser on the phone too, my eyes flickering from the show, to the news, to the shopping or social media site. Every half hour or so, I’d shuttle back to the kitchen to fetch something else to eat, occasionally ordering in or even venturing out to the corner shop. Only once I was a few hours deep in an episode, I couldn’t stand to be looked at, wasn’t able to even meet my own eyes in the mirror, so I tended to make do with what I had in the house, mashing up butter with icing sugar and spreading it on bread, or making my own cookie dough and eating it with my fingers from a bowl, the kind of food that I had resorted to when I lived with my mother and there were no other options.