‘You’re very sweet,’ he told me. I guess it was true – I could be sweet. I was Irish. I didn’t want to rely on it too heavily, do that whole bit, degrade myself. When my mother finalised the divorce from my father all she said was, ‘Never give people what they want.’ It was such good advice.

At the party, where I first met him, I explained that I wasn’t a famous person and I had zero intention of becoming one. I wanted to make him laugh. I liked him. That didn’t happen to me every day. ‘Really,’ I said, ‘I nurse quiet neurotic suspicions that even the people who know me don’t want to know me. That’s the opposite of being famous.’

A week later, he moved me in. That first night, after I unpacked, I watched a topless man in the building opposite throw shirts out of his window. They were well-made, had seen fine interiors. I could tell by the way they flew. A rich, stiff quality that sailed nicely. The shirts fluttered, then fell, and slashes of green and pink stunned the sky. The man smiled directly at me as they hit the ground.

*

During our first few weeks together, he encouraged me to act. I looked like something audiences might want. I didn’t have a problem with the parts, but it was the rooms I had to go into to get the parts. It was the places I had to stand to get the parts. Before I walked in, I told myself, ‘Get it right, get it right,’ and then I froze.

Appraising women wasn’t done anymore so it was all performed through a slippery new language I couldn’t bear. Although I lacked presence, the directors appreciated the completely vacant thing I had going on. They said I was like a person vacuum-packed, sucked in tight, motionless. My boyfriend compared me to a painting of a glowing, alien foetus he had once seen – powerful but unborn. Same kind of look. Work that, he suggested. Own it. I nodded like I understood and I stopped auditioning.

Apart from acting I had my occasional job which was layering make-up on collapsing faces. I’d been improving faces for years, presenting my own as aspiration. I turned up to houses wielding my toolkit, scraped off undesirable features and pencilled in better ones. These women gave me advice for the city—find people you can trust, guard your skin against pollution, look both ways when you cross the street. But I didn’t work much. I didn’t have to. The comedian gifted me a roll of cash and I strolled around pretending I was invested in life’s little things. It was summer and I sat in Broadway shows for the air conditioning, supped Diet Cokes and watched stage children slam doors, throw cute temper tantrums.