She hated it all, and this was an attempt to run away, but it wasn’t going to work – she knew that already. Running away was what had brought her here, and look where that had left James. Look where it had left her: helpless, lost, plodding along by a canal at seven in the fucking morning, somewhere in Berlin, far from anyone who loved her except one person who, seemingly, didn’t actually love her much at all. She hated what he’d said, the implication that she was some sort of chancer – someone who drifted from one life to the next, heedless of the fall-out for everyone else. She hated the part of her that believed he was right.

No, it was no good thinking like this. The body wouldn’t run if the brain was holding it back. She remembered saying that into the phone, James holding it out in front of him, gasping as he trotted along backwards to film her. ‘More of running is in the mind than you think.’ Quite a lot of it is also in the legs, I can assure you, James would remark later, de-sweating his shirt like a dishcloth before putting it in the wash.

It had been months, though. She’d been doing Pilates instead. She’d done a couple of spin classes recently but stopped twenty minutes in because she felt like she was dying. She’d done some swimming. The whole point was that running wasn’t her prison any more. And now that she was trying to break back into that prison, her body understandably didn’t want to know. Her once-concrete calves felt flabby and lethargic; her stomach was – she didn’t feel right at all. She managed to jog-run fifteen minutes. The voices of birds broke the silence; the water was very still. She checked her phone. She didn’t feel right.

She was doubled over on the path. It had come on so quickly. She felt the rising of the gorge, the resistance of every muscle. She felt that she could see her own face, sickly yellow. She retched; nothing. It had been years since this. The horrible minutes of trying to let go. Her palms felt like wet sponges. Spots of greenish light played across her field of vision. The actual moment, it was true, you didn’t know much about. Her body went limp and she vomited onto the footpath, just missing her trainers.

‘Jesus,’ she said.

The third time wasn’t as bad, already. After that she knew it was over. She felt like things might be all right if she stayed right here for the rest of time. Her joints moaned like old furniture. A sharp-edged pebble was nibbling at her kneecap but it felt like too much even to shift the two inches it would take. It had been stupid to run with booze inside her. It had been a stupid, stupid night.