After I had drunk two tumblerfuls of water, I replaced the toothbrushes and only then did I look in the mirror above the sink. My hair was mussed, the long layers everywhere and loops of it sticking up on top – a look my mother would have described as dragged through a hedge backwards. Mascara was smeared in black-eye rims beneath both eyes, a diagonal streak of it on one cheek – I had worn far too much eye make-up that night, I thought, something else I don’t normally do. In the unflattering bathroom light, a small fluorescent strip above the mirror, my eyes looked bloodshot. None of this augured well for how I was going to feel in the morning. I stared at myself with a mixture of exhaustion and self-disgust and wondered why I hadn’t been able to feel happier on my birthday. What was wrong with me? In the eyes of that tall woman in the loo at the wine bar, I had everything, I saw it in her gaze. Why couldn’t I appreciate my own good fortune?

When I thought back over the evening, the picture that stuck in my head was not everyone clapping and smiling at me. It was not Matty singing with open arms or Rosaria laughing at me because I didn’t get the candles. The picture that stuck in my head was of Jasmine, her smooth brown shoulders, the way Matty bent his head to hear what she was saying as she pushed a strand of hair back from her face.

It was 1.47 a.m., technically not my birthday any more. Maybe that was it. Maybe I had actually had a really good evening but it just didn’t feel that way now it was already the day after. I thought of Elena rising from the sofa – what was it about her that seemed so knowing, so self-contained? I thought about the woman with the large nose and dyed black hair, her reflection staring at my reflection in the mirror. My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears. I wondered what she would think of me and my lucky, lucky life if she could see me now.

As I left the bathroom, I closed the door behind me very gently, padded to the bed and lifted the edge of the duvet. I pulled my dress over my head, unhooked my bra and picked up a dirty T-shirt fortuitously lying nearby. I got into bed carefully but couldn’t pull enough of the duvet back over me as Matthew was sleeping half on top of it. I thought I was so drunk I would sleep immediately but instead I stayed awake for a long time, listening to his snores, lying on my side turned away from him with one arm tucked beneath my head, watching the numbers change on the electronic clock on my side of the bed and trying to interpret my own unease.

*