I couldn’t begin to see how Mark and I could recreate, in my single bed, the kind of freedom we found in rooms that we paid for so we could use them for an hour or two, and never see them again.

We paid for? He paid for. That was another attraction. He always settled the bill.

I knew it didn’t reflect very well on me to enjoy that as much as I did. But I’d spent so long scrimping and saving and watching the pennies, and making small, practical, dispiriting decisions so as to be able to cover the weekly food shop: bananas or apples that week? Tinned chicken or fresh? It was just so nice to be taken care of. I’d spent years fantasising (now and then, when I had the energy) about looking pretty in lingerie for a rich and masterful man who would find me irresistible. Well, now I had him, and it wasn’t a fantasy.

It was a miracle that I still managed to cut people’s hair, cook the dinner, clean the flat and settle the bills. I was so distracted I was like an amnesiac. It was as if I’d had a knock on the head that had displaced all the usual, sensible, day-to-day stuff, leaving me with erotic obsession and not much else.

But that day I wasn’t just thinking about sex with Mark. I was thinking about the future. The glorious future. My head told me it wouldn’t be plain sailing, but my heart didn’t care. My heart had decided to believe in happiness.

I went back to the flat after the last appointment of the day to get changed, and put Otis Redding on to get me in the mood – that was our music: ‘Dock of the Bay’ was our jukebox song. I had it on quiet, though – one of the nurses upstairs might be sleeping off a nightshift. Quiet worked fine, anyway.

I had new lingerie, new lipstick, I was in love, I was beloved, I was almost certainly about to have sex, it was spring and the sun was shining and a whole new life was opening up in front of me. What more could any woman want?

Even Ava didn’t strike me as being that much of a problem.

We just needed to talk to her – to both the girls – and explain what was really going on. This was the only bone of contention between me and him: I thought we should do it sooner rather than later, and he was holding back. He was nervous. Terrified. Well, that was only natural. I was doing my very best not to pressurise him: pressure from me was the last thing he needed.

Mark wanted it all to be perfect; he didn’t want to risk any of it slipping through his fingers. He wanted to control it. But keeping control of anything was impossible with Sean around. You were always up against the power of his appetite for booze, which was pretty much boundless.