I had to get out of the shop immediately because I had the sensation that mice were all over me. I tried to get to a third shop but Bonnie was getting impatient, so we are home again. She is watching TV and I am Googling ways to get rid of rodents from your house.

As advised, I stuff every hole in my kitchen with steel wool. I then pour peppermint oil all over everything and create a barricade across the entrance to the kitchen with suitcases, box files and shoe boxes. I finally settle into my office, which is also the spare room, and try to breathe.

I can’t stop thinking about the man on the bench. I can’t deny I feel a little lighter having shared a moment with someone who is worse off than me. Usually, my only solace is talking to strangers on the Internet.

When I was a teenager and the hair started to appear, the World Wide Web wasn’t a resource I could use as it didn’t exist yet. And besides, it should have been my mother who comforted me. But she was already on the path to self-destruction, and offered me little but stress and humiliation. Not being one to connect with strangers over a problem, I’d never have thought to ask around to find out if anyone else suffered from the same condition. Also, back then, I didn’t even know I had a condition. I just thought I was a freak of nature. And my mother making jokes about it in front of other girls my age made it worse. I remember one time we were giving my friend Alison a lift home from hockey practice – an already traumatising experience for me as I’d insist on wearing a jumper and jogging bottoms while everyone else was in shorts and t-shirts. I’d get so hot I’d feel too faint to carry on, meaning that my hockey skills – which were actually pretty advanced – went unnoticed, because I was too busy trying to hide my body. When my mother picked Alison and me up on this particular day, she asked Alison if I had showered after the game.

‘No, Ruby showers at home,’ Alison said.

My mother then had a field day.

‘No she doesn’t. You mean she doesn’t shower at school either? Oh no Ruby, you need to wash all of that hair on your back or it will get smelly. No one wants a smelly girl.’

Alison laughed. I don’t know if it was out of awkwardness or because she and my mother were as bad as each other, but that laugh haunted me. The shower situation was far too challenging, so to avoid rumours about me never washing, I gave group sport up altogether.