The noise of the van made me jump from where I was slumped on the sofa, surrounded by tissues and half-drunk cups of tea. You would hardly know me in this state, flattened by a dull crushing misery, or else hectic with terror, so much that I can’t sit down, and I pace the living room making plans. How I might get away. Where I could go. Every time the phone rang or my mobile buzzed, my heart leaped up. I could feel it gasping in my chest, sluicing adrenaline into my veins. If anyone knew the situation I was in, they would think How have you let this happen? How could you be so stupid? I’d have said the same, before it was me.

So when I heard the van, I was on my feet, head crowding with my excuses already. It’s not true. I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry. Poppet had run to the door at the sound, his nails skittering on the slate floor, barking foolishly. We had so little traffic here; we didn’t get milk delivered and Nick had routed most of the post to his office. It must be him home early, and I wasn’t dressed and hadn’t started dinner. What would he say? Or maybe it was something else. Her. But no, it was a removals van, and I remembered seeing the estate agent’s car one day a few weeks before, someone coming to view the cottage. I never imagined they’d take it. A woman was being helped down from the cab by a stout removals man. She was in her forties, dressed in a gilet and proper country-style green wellies. Her hair was long and dark, grey showing through at the crown, and I could see from a distance she wore no make-up, like me. Perhaps she’d had the same thought: there was no one to see us out here.

Before all this, I had really tried. A large part of me was relieved to have left the situation at work, and everything with Damian, if not London itself. For the first few weeks it was like a mini-break, waking up with the eaves of the cottage over my head, the cheeps of birds outside. I’d put on my Hunter wellies and Joules quilted jacket and some kind of snood Nick’s mum had got me for Christmas – which made me think, retrospectively, maybe she’d known? Maybe everyone had known we were moving except me? When Nick came home I’d make sure to be cooking or cleaning or wrangling the various tradesmen who’d transformed the crumbling cottage into a shiny modern box, complete with wine cellar and studio and music room for the guitars Nick supposedly played, which had dust in the frets he hadn’t touched them for so long. I could honestly tell my friends I was busy, a renovation goddess like Sarah Beeny.