I almost didn’t make it to town – the taxi was twenty minutes late, grousing about ice on the road, and then the train was delayed by snow on the rails. But I did make it. Claudia worked in the centre of London, near Old Street. As I lumbered out of the Tube, I was assaulted by the city – the noise, the blare of traffic, the smells of petrol and food and the homeless man camped out near the station. I dropped a pound into his cup, mumbling some kind of apology. Here, among the rush of life, my fears seemed absurd. Complaining that I didn’t know how to use my expensive speaker system? That I was alone, in a beautiful house, with no work to do? That my dog had gone missing, through my own carelessness? But the word in the snow. That was real. As I wearily crossed the city, I was shocked to find Christmas decorations up already, reminding me that time was marching on. Nick and I had barely discussed what to do this year. I had a horrible feeling he wanted his mother to come.

When I met Nick five years ago, a punt on an unpromising online date, I had felt smug, home free, panting on first base. I didn’t look at anyone else. We sailed through cohabiting, in our private world of two. My career flourished. I put on two stone. I stopped painting. So we got married, because that was what you did when you were this happy and you already joint-owned a blue retro toaster. On my wedding day, as Claudia helped me into my dress, so tightly boned I couldn’t breathe, she had whispered a question in my ear. Are you sure, babe? Petulant, I’d insisted I was. And now I had to find a way to tell her – I had been wrong.

Claudia hadn’t wanted to meet, I could tell. She’d said: I don’t know, babe, weekdays can be tricky. We don’t really take lunch. But I insisted, too far gone for pride. I had to talk to someone who wasn’t out there, marooned in the countryside. Someone who knew the old Suzi, not this new, housebound, whale-like version of myself. So we were meeting in a restaurant near her office – she’d more or less forced me to pick the place, with her vagueness and slow replies. When I got there I saw it was all wrong: too shiny, too much glass and steel, and noisy, the kind of place voices roll off the walls and back again.

Claudia was eight minutes late, pushing open the door with her elbow, tapping at her phone. I waved when I saw her, too hard. She threw me a distracted smile and kept typing as she sat. ‘Hello, darling. Sorry. Manic day.’