I remember the rush of desire I felt to be a nun on seeing that room. I could imagine my life so clearly: rising in the dark to pray, eating thin porridge, tucking up my habit in the front and back so I could do my share of household work, beating dust from carpets or hoeing the convent’s vegetable garden. The whole enterprise seemed to me a wonderful cheat, a way to opt out of the hazards and obligations of adult life.

After that visit, I nurtured a secret fascination with nuns. I borrowed books about religious orders from the library, and used a box cutter to slice out pictures of them, which I pasted into a scrapbook.

My teenage reveries often centred around which order I would one day join. I didn’t want to be a Poor Clare, because I had no interest in wearing brown. I preferred the habit of the Sisters of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament, its scarlet drama. I also liked the blue scapular and gold heart favoured by the Sisters of Mary Reparatrix. In my wildest dreams, I would imagine being a Daughter of Charity and wearing the full cornette, starching it into blanched architectural majesty every morning. For me, Vatican II was a grave disappointment. Nuns wearing tweed skirts and baggy turtlenecks, nuns in jeans – it was unthinkable. What was the point of being a nun if not to move through the world in such beautiful mystery, such privacy? To have your body be a total secret to everyone, even yourself?

My parents – despite my maternal grandmother’s pilgrimage – weren’t religious. So I never gave up on becoming a nun, not exactly; I just wasn’t sure how it could be achieved. Preliminary enquiries revealed that I would need to be baptised, for one thing, and that after this there would be a series of other sacraments to complete before I could even consider taking vows. I didn’t want to have to go to so much trouble. I just wanted someone to shave my head. I wanted to learn a little Latin, to eat my meals in silence, to possess no more and no less than the woman in the next room.

Was that so much to ask?

In my indecision I went with the current, got a degree, landed softly on an ergonomic chair behind a teller’s window. I made that window my own little vestibule, wiping it down with hand sanitiser every morning, saying Amen in my head when the computer chimed to tell me it was ready to begin its work.

I chose my employer because their shirts were blue, the logo on the pocket red. With my first pay cheque I bought a little gold Tiffany heart pendant, which I wore hidden under my uniform.