She caught sight of her own face in the dressing-table mirror and that gave her a further jolt. Her mother was right. She did look a mess. She hadn’t bothered to change out of her drab work clothes, her hair badly needed cutting and, admit it, she’d put on weight since the divorce – a lot of weight, a couple of dress sizes. Setting the cup of coffee down carefully on the table mat, she sat on the edge of her bed staring at her reflection, not liking what she saw.

Crossing her arms round herself she rocked to and fro, beyond tears, but feeling full of pain. Bad enough that Darren had started being a bit violent. She hadn’t known what to do about that, had felt too ashamed to seek help.

Then last year he’d suddenly told her that he’d met someone else and was having an affair. He’d doubled the blow by saying that he’d have left her anyway because he didn’t like being married and didn’t want to settle down and have a family. And she wasn’t much fun in bed. Ha! That was because he’d started hurting her. He always apologised and said it was because he got carried away, but she’d gradually come to realise that he enjoyed it.

She’d been so stupidly, blindly in love it had taken her months to understand she’d been more in love with being married, having her own home and planning to have children than she’d been with spending her whole life with Darren. She’d been such a fool, and that had added an extra layer of humiliation to the break-up.

Now her parents were throwing her out and it felt as if no one wanted her.

In the end she couldn’t hold the tears back any longer and wept herself to sleep, crying quietly for a long time, not wanting her parents to hear.

She woke again just after midnight and couldn’t get back to sleep, so she went online for a while and had a look at houses for rent. The costs had shot up since she’d last rented anywhere and she definitely couldn’t afford to rent a whole house on her own. A small flat, not even one near the centre of Bristol, was the best she could hope for.

After a while she went back to bed, yet even though she felt exhausted, sleep still eluded her. As the darkness morphed slowly into the grey of early dawn, it began to feel as if the river of tears had cleared some blockage inside her. Her parents were changing their whole lives, and if they could move on, so could she.

She didn’t need to look into the mirror to remember how awful she looked, but when she got up, she did face her reflection again, staring back at the puffy face and body. She’d fought so hard to lose the last of her plumpness for the wedding, because Darren liked girls who were sylph-like; now all the fat was back on again, plus a little extra.