‘I think I’m becoming a hunchback,’ I confessed.

Paula was adamant that I was not a hunchback, that my fundamental problem was that I used people to feel attractive. Paula wasn’t interested in turning heads. She didn’t want men to look at her. Anytime a man looked at her she just picked up the phone and called the refuse collection. I think she was in love with the person on the other end of the line. Their conversations tended to be about Art and Beauty and not about bins at all. In a short space of time, Paula became quite a dangerous woman to know. Slowly, I moved my desk three inches away from hers.

At the weekends, I compensated by overeating. I went to nice places and flirted with the waiters. I bought books on pressure points from charity shops, some of which were highly complex pop-ups. I read these books or I rested them, two at a time, on my head and walked the length of my father’s house. As soon as I moved in I realised this house was a mistake. It was too big for me and the stuff I owned shrank by comparison. It looked like I had a wardrobe of baby clothes in those giant, oak cupboards. If I couldn’t sleep in one room I just moved to another. It wasn’t as suffocating as I needed it to be. Sometimes, I just sat in a tiny space on the sitting-room floor and ran my fingers over those fake 3D backs. It was like seeing a photo of myself with every flaw removed. Often, I played with my father’s collectibles. It wasn’t a large collection, just two ceramic children, a boy playing the flute, a girl smiling encouragingly, and a shell in which you could hear the sea. I moved the children around the mantelpiece and marvelled at their serenity. I turned them to face outwards; I turned them to face inwards. There wasn’t much else to do. I listened to the seashell like it was my last hope.

My boss described the house as ‘weird’. He said the whole set-up was ‘weird.’ Except me. I was cute and he liked to tickle me under the chin, and then take off his clothes. He guessed something was wrong with me lately: in the way I sipped my wines, the way I sat upright and desperately still. He raised the question of me making myself sick.

‘Only during the week,’ I said, cheerfully, touched by his concern.

We were giving up. Previously, he had listed out my faults with amazing conviction and I truly thought that brought us closer together as a couple. I had no discernible direction in life, I didn’t want anything, I was stupid and entitled. Suddenly, he acted as if he didn’t care whether I knew these things or not. Instead, he said, ‘Okay I’m going to make myself come now,’—as if removing me from the whole act was a sort of kindness. All that was left to talk about was what we’d do to the bin men if we ever found them. Our last night together I folded up my blouse and asked him to perform a thermal massage on my back and growing hump. He refused. Several weeks later, he called me into his office. There had been complaints from anonymous staff. I was never at my desk. He said it was imperative an assistant be at his or her desk.