I found it impossible to let things go; I was still checking my ex’s Facebook umpteen times a day. Once, when I was younger, I had a cat named Pugwash. He grew old. Sick. When I was sixteen, my mum told me that the kindest thing to do would be to put him to sleep but I shouted and I cried and I wouldn’t agree to it. For days afterwards I watched with shame as Pugwash limped around the house he’d once raced around with ease. My guilty ears listened to his sad mewing as he failed to make the jump onto the windowsill where he liked to watch the traffic. I knew it was best for him. I knew. And yet I still couldn’t envisage life without him. At the end of that week I came home from school and found Mum had made the decision for me. Letting him go when she knew I wouldn’t. Knew I couldn’t.

‘So you’re a regular hero,’ I said. ‘Saving women from drowning. Rescuing birds.’

‘Oh, I’m far from perfect,’ Adam said. ‘I leave the toilet seat up. Toast crumbs all over the worktop. I dip the butter knife into the Marmite.’

‘Urrgh, Marmite. You’re right. You’re not perfect.’

Our laughter died away and there was a change in the atmosphere as Adam asked, ‘So, Anna Adlington, who has made me laugh more tonight than I have in months, who are you, really?’

I didn’t know how to answer that. Who was I?

‘I… I don’t know anymore.’ As a wife I would have been someone. But now self-doubt and self-loathing had filled the space where my confidence used to be. I felt the constriction in my throat as my words thinned to nothing. Adam gave me a moment to compose myself before he quietly said, ‘I didn’t meant to upset you.’

‘You didn’t.’ I gave a hollow laugh. Part of me wanted to tell him everything, but the sting of being jilted was too sharp. Too raw. And there was a part of me, a bigger part, that still felt it was all my fault and I was scared to admit that to him. Afraid that if he saw the unlovable part of me that I was trying to keep hidden – the part that made it easy to cast me adrift – he would run away too.

‘He’s a fool. Whoever let you go.’ He read my silence.

‘If by “let me go” you mean dumped me two weeks before my wedding, so I had to come on my honeymoon with my best friend, who pretended to be my wife to save me the embarrassment of explaining it all to the hotel… Anyway, you said if you loved someone—’

‘Did he love you?’

‘No.’ I wrapped my arms around myself, forming a physical barrier to keep all my emotions inside.

I was unlovable.