Who knew? It was too late to ask. I was alone in my stagnant house with no other person to stir the air. The slightest noise made me jump. Those first weeks I felt too exposed to go outside, yet indoors the hours stretched endlessly. Friends asked me to supper but that still left the rest of the day to kill. It was November, and darkness fell at four. When I could rouse myself I’d go round switching on the lights but then I thought: why bother, just for me?

I missed him. I missed him so much, despite my bitterness and humiliation. I missed him groaning with me when Trump came on the TV. The companionship we shared, in an ever-more dismaying world. The chatting and banalities. I missed the talking, more than anything, even his annoying habit of asking me a question when I had a mouth full of toothpaste. I had so much to say, the words silting up as the days passed. All those thoughts rolling round my head, all those unsaid words—what could I do with them all? Needless to say, I couldn’t sleep. I missed his arms around me at night, keeping me safe. His naked body, the smell of his skin. How could he bear to be alone?

For now he was settled in Dorset, living his new life. What did he do all day? Didn’t he miss our arguments? The squabbling seagulls were no substitute. I wanted to know about his niece’s latest love rat, and his friend Bing’s scan results. But these conversations were no longer appropriate. He’d made that clear.

I’d been dumped out of the blue, and overnight become one of those women I’d secretly pitied and kept meaning to invite to supper. Single women with their single cinema ticket and single hotel room and single Serves One Vegan Bake. And a cat, always a cat. That was me, now.

Our house was in Muswell Hill, which made it even worse. Muswell Hill was entirely populated by smug couples leading enviable lives. At dusk I’d walk the streets gazing into my neighbours’ windows, each a lamplit tableau of middle-class contentment. Ten-year-olds playing the violin. Candlelit dinner parties. Teenagers romping with labradoodles. The women sang in choirs and did Pilates, and the men played football with the other husbands and they sent their children to private schools even though they read the Guardian. They had date nights and said they were each other’s best friend—how nauseating was that? Some of them were on their second marriage and even smugger. Some weren’t married at all because they didn’t believe in a piece of paper, and they were the smuggest of the lot. And every Saturday they all went to the farmers’ market where everybody smiled at everybody all the time.

‘Ugh! They make me vomit,’ said Azra, who lived above a Turkish takeaway. It was only a bus ride from Muswell Hill but it was another world. ‘Anyway, I bet the husbands are banging their PAs.’