I almost say, Look forget it, I don’t want to come after all, but I don’t. ‘I say, ‘No, I can remember that. Thank you.’

‘Good luck,’ says the voice, and the call ends. Very British, that good luck, it covers a multitude of future scenarios – although sometimes it sounds like a trap.

CHAPTER 5

It’s Monday. Days usually roll around like monoliths for Dad and I. Dull and indistinguishable. For some, it’s ‘Another day, another dollar’; for us, it’s ‘Another day, another day …’, but today I’m already at my second destination. My first, Loved Before, the dress agency next to the laser clinic in Muswell Hill, was quiet early this morning. I go there now and again – and not just when I’ve been to an appointment next door. I don’t frequent high-street clothes shops. They have gorgeous, unblemished girls slinking out of cubicles with smug looks on their faces; bored and beautiful women manning the cubicles. Too many mirrors. I like charity shops and this rather wonderful boutique, a haven of blush-pink walls and chandeliers and a polished dark-wood floor, where the only mirror is in the gorgeously lit changing room and I never feel intimidated.

‘Hi, Prue.’

Maya, the owner, appeared from behind the swishy pale gold curtain of the back room with a mountain of delicious-looking things over one arm. I like Maya. We’ve chatted a few times.

‘Hello, Maya.’

‘One of my favourite contributors brought in lots of amazing items this morning,’ she said, walking over to me, a vision in a tangerine slip dress and bejewelled sandals. I was fingering the hem of a gorgeous lace shift dress I’d never have the guts to wear in a million years … ‘This woman’s always travelling,’ she explained. ‘She just came back from Belize. I reckon she never wears the same outfit twice.’

Loved Before sells second-hand party wear and beautiful work wear, nothing else, and strictly no tat. Everything acquired by the shop is what Maya calls ‘lovely quality’ and has been previously owned by women who live glamorous, useful lives. Women with stories to tell. That’s how I see these women, anyway. I imagine women glittering at cocktail parties, stepping on to giant yachts with a glass of champagne in their hand, dancing barefoot on the beach on tropical nights and storming it in the boardroom in stern, sexy navy and the highest of heels, as shards of the shattered glass ceiling fall around them. Women who are literally going places. Places I would never go.