Liv comes through in her dressing gown, smelling of the shower gel she uses that reminds me of our first holiday together, and I’m already looking forward to Leo’s playdate this afternoon because we’ll get more time to try to make a baby . . .

I interviewed a positivity guru for the Secrets of Wellbeing show I do, and he said that we often only realize we were happy in retrospect, after things go wrong. That part of the key to contentment is to take the time to notice the present moment, and to be grateful.

So I say it in my head: This is happiness.

Chapter 60: Kerry

31 July 2015

‘You really think I’m ready to leave?’

‘What do you think, Kerry? It’s your decision to make.’

As always, Earl throws the most difficult question back to me.

‘Our relationship has lasted about the same time as my marriage. I’m scared of what it’ll be like not to have you as my safety net.’

‘What is there that I can do that you can’t do alone now?’

I look out of the window, at the leaves rustling on the trees. It’s my second summer of watching them from this bloody IKEA chair. In the first summer, when I was falling apart, they were mostly a green blur because after so many years refusing to cry, I suddenly couldn’t seem to stop. We talked about how alone I felt, how I couldn’t imagine admitting these feelings to anyone: not Tim, not Ant, not even Hanna from med school days.

By autumn, the leaves turned red as my tearfulness turned into deep gloom. This was when I went to my GP. She wanted to sign me off for a fortnight with depression, to give the SSRIs she prescribed a chance to kick in. We compromised on seven days, and there was no mention of depression on my sick note. I hadn’t worked my balls off for nine years to destroy my career with doubts about my mental health.

Earl told me my response meant I was still in the bargaining stage of grief. But what had I lost?

By winter, the trees were bare and the antidepressants were keeping me afloat while I began to understand. Earl and I worked backwards. I’d been in denial about my losses: Elaine’s death, my ectopic pregnancy, the divorce. Yet I couldn’t blame those recent events entirely. When we mapped it, I’d been having my ‘funks’ as I called them – weeks when my life faded to grey – since my late teens.

Becoming a doctor was meant to heal me. Instead, I shut down my emotions in an attempt at self-preservation. But what did I need preserving from?