I wake up and the cabin is empty. I don’t know where I am, there is just the dull ache in my head and the sharp pang in my stomach. Then I remember.

Grandma’s stories come rolling back in with my own memories, as though they are part of my life now too. I can’t believe she kissed Jim on the train. I can, too. I feel her barrelling forwards towards Virginia, towards Roy, trying to grab on to something, anything which might slow her down. I know what it is to screw up on purpose.

In therapy they have tried to get me to pinpoint a time when it started. I tell them how after Dad left I watched Mom looking backwards over one shoulder to see herself in the mirror from behind, the back of her thigh rippled with cellulite. The sheer size of her ass, how when she sat it squashed against the armrests of a chair. I looked at my own little ass that night, standing on the toilet seat so I could see it in the bathroom mirror. It was small and bony, like the rest of me. My mother’s softness was her weakness. I would never have that excess flesh, breasts spilling over the top of the bra. The belly in folds, sagging. The arms jiggling when she stirred the soup, mixed the pancake batter. I would stay small forever. I could fit in the gap between the fridge and the wall. I could hide in the cupboard beneath the TV. Disappear behind the living room curtains. If I stayed this size I could always slip away.

I tell them about playing Barbie with my neighbour, Jessica, because she always let me be Skipper. I didn’t want to be anyone else. Skipper didn’t have those ugly lumps and bumps. Skipper’s clothes were easy to take on and off, she was straight and narrow. Jessica liked to be Shopper Barbie or Glitter Beach Barbie and go off in the convertible to lie down in the back seat with Glitter Beach or Shaving Fun Ken. They moaned and clacked their hard plastic limbs together in the back seat of the Fun for Four convertible, while I gave Skipper tiny braids or a change of wardrobe for when they finally emerged.

‘Your hair’s a mess!’ Skipper would say to Glitter Beach when she was upright again. ‘And your boobs are showing!’

Jessica would pull the shirt down over the hard tan breasts and slip the tiny pink stilettos back on. ‘Don’t be so boring!’ She’d wave the little plastic hand with painted fingernails at Ken, who was driving towards the laundry basket at a breakneck speed. ‘Bye, Ken!’ Then she’d turn to her skinny, prepubescent sister. ‘Hey, Skipper, let’s go to the mall.’