I have a desperate urge to go to the office, to march in there against Abayomi’s orders and sit myself down at my desk and refuse to move. But I would only humiliate myself even further. Abayomi has a wife and three children, a whole family at home, I’ve seen the photograph on his desk. He doesn’t know that Charlie is all I have in my life. How can he know I have nothing else to do with my time? Instead, I go to the cinema – the Ritzy. I buy a box of popcorn but I barely eat any of it. I sit through some strange art-house film, trying to understand what’s going on, and I get back home feeling sick and dizzy. Saturday passes in a strange sort of blur. On Sunday, I manage to take Charlie to the park.

But – except for the school runs – I don’t go out at all after that.

I spend the next two days balled up on the sofa underneath a blanket. There’s just nothingness, a vacuum, that fills up with my thoughts. I’m so ashamed; I keep picturing Abayomi sitting across from me with such a look of disappointment on his face. I go over and over the mistakes I’ve made. I try not to panic about the trouble I might be in. The hours until I can go and collect Charlie crawl past like snails, so much slower than the rushing of my mind; I punctuate the empty time by making cups of tea that I don’t drink. I try to make myself forget about Sarah, my need for answers, but I find myself checking my phone again and again for Marianne’s text. Sometimes I think I’ll manage to nap, but if I close my eyes, all that happens instead is that images play like a film on the ceiling above me. I see Sarah, before and after, I see myself in her flat, I see myself picking something up from the floor – something soft and square – a cushion? I see Sarah lying below me, I see Charlie, I see my own hands—

I jerk myself up. Lying in bed only makes me feel worse. It makes me feel as if I’m not coping, when I am coping, of course I am.