No, what she really wanted was to matter to someone, the way she’d mattered to her mother. She wanted to be important to someone. Connected, the way Julia was. She wanted to have someone’s back, and know they had hers. She wanted someone to know her and she wanted to be needed. What was the point of being here if no one needed you? If you didn’t make a difference to someone’s life?

She had so much to give, and no one to give it to.

She was lonely, but she’d never tell anyone that. If you admitted you were lonely, people assumed there was something wrong with you. The media talked about an epidemic of loneliness, and yet admitting that you felt that way was a statement of failure. She was thirty, unattached and living in the most exciting city in the world. People assumed her life was like a day on the set of an upbeat sitcom and from the outside it probably looked that way, apart from her apartment, which was more like the set of a murder mystery. On the inside? On the inside, deep in her heart, she was crushingly lonely but if she told people they’d judge her and tell her all the things she was doing wrong. Or they’d invite her out, and she knew that wasn’t her problem. It wasn’t the number of connections she made in her social life that mattered, it was their depth.

When people asked, she told them what they wanted to hear because anything else would make them uncomfortable.

Yes, I stayed in last night and it was great. I had a chilled evening and caught up on phone calls.

My social life is so crazy it’s good to have a night in doing nothing.

Weekdays were easier than weekends when time seemed to move at half pace, and whatever she did she was aware she was doing it alone. Running in the park meant witnessing the intimacy of other people. Dodging mothers with children, couples holding hands, groups of friends laughing and drinking coffee on a bench. Shopping meant rubbing shoulders with women choosing outfits for an exciting night out.