Daft woman. What had got into her, carrying on like this? Maybe the lightning had zapped a few of her brain cells when it frazzled her telly. Elbows on knees, she put her head in her hands, waiting for the feeling to pass, listening to the sounds of people having a barbecue in the garden behind hers. She could hear Lois next door laughing with her little daughter, and a couple of kids singing in another garden as they bounced up and down on a trampoline, and even though these were all happy noises of people enjoying themselves, for some reason tonight they just made Alison feel like crying.

It was bewildering, frankly. Discombobulating. She never usually felt this way. She’d always cherished her evenings at home, looking forward all day to that moment when she walked in and closed the door behind her, leaving the rest of the world behind. Telly and a TV dinner – that suited her; you couldn’t beat telly and a TV dinner, she’d always said. Only all of a sudden, it didn’t feel quite so enticing. It didn’t feel enough any more.

It must be hard being on your own sometimes, Alison, Jeanie Mortimer said in her head, with that cloying sympathy, and Alison felt her hackles rise. Because she was fine. She was absolutely fine!

And yet . . . She kept spooling back to the moment her TV screen had blanked, the horror she’d felt at the prospect of an evening without it. You’d think she was some kind of an addict, the way she’d panicked at being cut off from her drug, terrified of having to face her own solitude.

She stared unseeingly out at the garden, absent-mindedly listening to the shrieks and squeals coming from next door, where Lois’s daughter was splashing about in the paddling pool. Music started up from somewhere – the barbecuers’ house perhaps – and she found herself getting up and turning away, unable to bear the sounds of other people’s enjoyment any longer. Then, crossing the kitchen, some impulse compelled her to unlock the door to the garage where Rich’s beloved old car sat, the red Jensen Interceptor, his pride and joy. When he’d died, she’d given away or sold a lot of his possessions, but she hadn’t quite been able to bring herself to part with his car. Not after he’d spent so many happy hours ‘tinkering’, as he called it.

‘You’ve still got that old thing?’ Robyn said periodically in a disapproving sort of way. ‘And you don’t even drive it?’, as if her mother was soft in the head, far too sentimental for her own good. ‘You should flog it, Mum, I bet it’s worth a fortune!’

Yes, I’ve still got this old thing, Alison thought, opening the car door and sliding into the front seat (tan fake-leather; you’d never get that now). She folded her arms against the steering wheel and rested her head there. Oh, Rich. Why did you have to leave me? she thought, as she always did, tears leaking out of her eyes. Why couldn’t you just talk to me about how desperate you must have been feeling?