Time for a bath. Anything to feel better. I remind myself that having a long bath alone is a luxury, something Cec certainly won’t be able to do for a while! I turn on the taps and put on an episode of Desert Island Discs, and then sink into the hot water, letting out a noise of pure bliss. I put more lavender oil drops into the water and exfoliate my face with a ground mix of botanicals to clear away dead skin. It’s harsh and feels like sand on my face. I scrub and scrub and imagine that I am scrubbing away the shit bits of my personality. I shave my legs without concentrating and accidentally cut my ankle. The bath starts to fill with blood and begins to look like a crime scene. Ow.

My ringtone buzzes with the sounds of Eve’s ‘Who’s That Girl’. My sister Zeta is calling me. I’d been keeping her in the loop about the Jacob situation – she’s the only person I’ve really been able to talk to, but most of it has been over text. I wipe my hand on a towel and hang half my body out of the bath to answer it.

‘Hey sis! I’m back from my travels and I need to see your face immediately. How are you doing?’ It felt so nice to hear Zeta’s voice.

God, I have missed her. She works for a refugee crisis charity and was in Bristol at their HQ helping over Christmas and then she went off on a trip to Calais and Greece for a couple of months. I can’t believe we are related sometimes, her doing stuff for others all the time. I can’t even get myself dressed at the moment.

‘Please don’t go away for that amount of time again, please. It’s been horrible without you,’ I say, the water from my body dripping onto the tiles.

‘You were in my dream last night, Ol, and it was really weird, you kept barking like a dog and I was so confused about what was wrong. Anyway, you OK?’ Zeta laughs, chewing a piece of gum. Zeta and I have always told each other our strangest dreams from when we were very little and shared a bedroom, something I probably wouldn’t necessarily tell anyone else.

‘Weird. I’m fine, but actually I could do with a chat. Big time.’

‘I bet. I haven’t heard the full story of what happened with Jacob. I’ve been thinking about you loads. Wanna meet at the Crooked Cock in a few hours?’

‘Yes please,’ I say. I rinse myself and pull the bath plug out, listening to the bloody water gargle its way down the hole as I rub my back and armpits. My ankle drips over my bath mat and I stick some tissue to it because – surprise surprise, adult that I am – I have no plasters in the house.