In doing that, I broke all three of my mother’s golden rules, which she’d so painstakingly instilled in me, in one blaze of glory. I wasn’t a gentleman, I wasn’t kind, and I didn’t take care with a woman’s heart. And my mother was right again, because the consequences of not being a good man were exactly as bad as she’d hinted they’d be.

I couldn’t possibly have known that the last time I saw Lou was the last time I’d see her for sixteen years. No way was I that smart. But even though her initial absence took very little getting used to – weeks turned into months turned into years, became a habit – I never managed to completely forget I had a sister. And every so often, when I’d feel someone jostling at my elbow on the Tube or in the pub, for a split second something would go off in my head, and I could never help but turn around and look down.

More than once, I’ve wondered if the two missing women from my past have anything to do with the way so many women go missing in my present. And of course they bloody do.

MS HARRIET MOTWELL

Dear Mr Mulberry, no doubt you’re used to people asking for advice, but from the outset let me tell you I don’t have any expectations of an answer from you – either physically or existentially. I am writing for entirely selfish reasons in the hopes that somehow it may, for once in my life, be the right thing to do. I appear to have made a lot of mistakes, despite a long and illustrious career dedicated to excellence, so I am attempting something different.

When I saw your picture in the paper, it struck me immediately that you are a man who lives life with gusto and doesn’t leave a wasted minute by the wayside. Chutzpah, my mother would have called it, if she’d been around to see that photo of you. For that I am truly envious, because I myself have most certainly been wasteful. I’ve wasted so much of my life and I continue on my merry way doing so.

You might not think it immediately if you saw me, because from the outside I look like a very successful woman. Important job, serviceable looks, luxurious amount of money in the bank. There’s no need to go into depth, but you can take it as read that I’ve risen to the highest echelons of a career I regret, I live alone in a too-big house with a too-big garden I regret, and I drive a very expensive, politically correct car that I thoroughly regret. (By the way, don’t ever let yourself get talked into a Model 3 Tesla unless you have a degree in IT.)

I’ll be retiring next year and when I look back, as I’m sure I’ll be expected to, with a PowerPoint presentation at an expensive dinner paid for by the company, I’ll have to finally face up to the thing I’ve managed to stay one step ahead of all these years. That I once had dreams. Real dreams of things I wanted to do, words I wanted to say, the person I wanted to be. But there was always an alternative and I always took it. To not do or say those things, not be that person – in short, to ignore my dreams and settle for the life laid out in front of me. The road most travelled.