If I have learned anything from all of this, it is that we need to face it: our truth, our whole truth and nothing but. That is what truly protects us from madness. Facing and dealing with the things in our lives that have happened, or that we’ve done. Dealing with the parts of ourselves that we are most frightened of.

I draw a thick heavy line through all of those words, erasing them, redacting them, blotting them out.

Then I write the true words in their place.

Chapter 40

I met Charlie’s father the summer I returned home from university. Uni had been a stretch for me. I didn’t cope very well with being away from home. Growing up, I’d been so used to doing everything Mum’s way. I didn’t know how to think for myself. Afterwards, that June, I came back to the same house, back to my parents. My old school friends had moved on, or I hadn’t kept in touch. It was a hot summer, a heatwave. There was very little to do except wait for my exam results.

I didn’t know what I wanted to do next in my life. My thoughts about a career drew a blank. The whole summer stretched ahead of me, emptily.

Most days, I took the train into Brighton, meandered along the seafront. I met Charlie’s dad – Luke – there.

I remembered him vaguely from school. He had been in the year above me. He remembered me vaguely too: enough to recognize me but not enough to really know anything about me.

We hung out together all of that summer. Come July, we were officially dating. Come August, I had got my results: a 2:2.

Bit of a disappointment, really.

I got a job, working in a local café. Luke was working in his dad’s business, a timber yard on the outskirts of town. He usually smelled of sawdust when we met up. We were together for the whole of the next year. He had a flat that I stayed at most of the time, taking the train back at weekends to see my parents. The following February, we put my name on the lease.

I think I got pregnant because I didn’t have any other plans. We both had steady jobs, we lived together. Sometimes we’d talk about getting married, but Luke’s dad had been married three times, so he didn’t believe in it, he said. So we made a baby instead. I just couldn’t think of what else to do in my life.

I liked being pregnant. I really did. It was a proper project.

My parents were happy, too. My mum had often talked about grandchildren. A sort of second chance for her, maybe. As a mum, she had never got things quite right.

Over the next winter, my stomach grew and grew.