I slash and hack at the Tempur mattress and feather pillows. My arms flail and my body takes on a life of its own and I lose control. It feels good again to not have to be the person everyone thinks I should be. Perfect. To do what I feel. I hack away until the whole room is white and I am white and only then do I feel pure again.

I must have fallen asleep with the knife in my hand because when I wake up at 2 a.m. I’m covered in feathers and cuddling a chef’s carver. I check myself for alcohol and hope that I haven’t been to the in-between with this knife, but it’s OK because I remember everything about last night. The dress is lying in shreds and the tiara is bent and broken. Our wedding album is in shreds on the floor beside me, every picture destroyed.

I look at the cover and the stab marks in it. It’s OK because I know now that I never should have kept it sacred. That I was right to begin with. Our marriage was a sham and no amount of explaining away your behaviour as stress or boredom or that’s just what men do sometimes could make any of it right.

It’s OK because I know, in that moment, that I have a plan.

I take off my clothes and leave them in the feather-strewn bedroom. There are clothes in the tumble dryer and I walk through the house naked and dress in the kitchen. I catch my reflection in the kitchen window and I look almost childlike, my hair hanging over my face. This feels like some kind of an exorcism, washing that man right out of my hair, and I pull out some stray feathers.

I open the back door and go to the hole. Fucking Rover barks but my security light doesn’t switch on. I watch to see if my neighbours’ lights come on but they’re desensitised to this particular alarm. So I lift the lid and pull out the holdall and the journal. The pictures, loose now, spill out and I scoop them up and push them into the briefcase. I feel around until I find a box inlaid with jade and bring that with me.

I go back into the house and sit down at the table. Rover’s quiet now and I open the box. It’s black silk inside, all compartments for your toiletries, except you used it as a dumping ground for bits of tat from your pockets. I pull out single cufflinks and a tiny chrome spanner. A lighter. Some coins that were your father’s. Not that you gave a fuck about your poor father either, come to think about it. You built a case against him too, didn’t you?