I bought new make-up. A foundation with moisturising action and a mascara that promised to give your eyelashes ten times their normal volume; although it occurred to me, as I was putting it on, how alarming that might look if that were the actual result. Still, I kept a steady hand while I painted on layer after layer – face cream, foundation, eyeliner, eye shadow – and I took deep breaths periodically, pulling in the smell of beef casserole that was stewing in the kitchen. The place had been alive with more smells and noises throughout the day. I knew that some of it had been to keep me busy; I hadn’t needed to make an apple pie from scratch, for instance. I hadn’t been quite nervous enough to churn my own butter, though, or make a main meal that required anything more than peeling and chopping vegetables while dancing – or at the very least jigging – to the best and worst of mine and Rowan’s teenage years. I had a specific playlist for it; tracks that we’d listened to on the car radio when we’d been parked up somewhere for the privacy of it. When Jennifer Paige’s ‘Crush’ came on, though, I’d thought of Fred, sliced the carrot too harshly and caught my index finger in the process – and that put an end to the dance part of the preparations.

For something wholesome, I swapped to the playlist I shared with the girls. A Spotify set-up where all of us could add but none of us could take away and I laughed aloud, then, and asked the room, ‘But isn’t that my whole life with those girls?’

It occurred to me that thinking about them for too long might have caused some cosmic thread to start tugging, because, in the minutes after, I got a missed call from both Faith and Betty. I hadn’t spoken to either of them – any of them – about my plans for the night. I hadn’t needed to, really. I could have told them I was about to suggest a series of threesomes with farm animals and they would have nodded along to my face. They’d have me checked over by a head doctor behind my back, of course, but to my face they would have given me nothing but support. I knew the truth would be the same again of this – whatever ‘this’ ended up being.

‘Jesus, have I even decided?’ My reflection didn’t have the answer either, though, so she only stared back at me while I brushed on an additional layer of compact powder. When I arrived at a point of not being able to look myself in the eye any longer, I turned my attention to clothes.