‘The house was quiet. They’d all gone. I sat there on the bottom step, bemused by the chaos left in the wake of kid-departure, an ominous feeling that unutterable misery was lurking nearby. I stared at the mess unable to do anything about it. My phone rang. It was my mother in a panic because she couldn’t find her handbag. She said, “Are you all right, darling, you sound a bit slurry?” It was unusual these days for her to notice me in that way. I was touched and told her I was fine and that she should keep looking for her handbag – I was going to clean the house and go shopping and I would see her later in the church. She asked if she could bring anything for supper but I knew she wasn’t going to remember it so I said not to bother.

‘But somehow I didn’t get off that step for quite a few hours because I couldn’t decide what order to do things in. I rang Ness for support but she must have been busy at the gallery. She rang me back a little while later – I was still on the step – and she suggested I didn’t bother with cooking, to cheat and get a frozen one. She offered to pick something up after school. But no, I wanted to do this for my family. So, in an incredible display of togetherness, I ignored the filth, found the cookbook, made a list of ingredients and made my way up to Sainsbury’s. Then on the way back I popped into the hardware shop, determined to give the house a proper clean, and bought all sorts of things, my coat pockets bulging as I made my way home: metal scourers and limescale remover for the showerhead, drain unblocker for that dodgy bathroom sink, Spirit of Salts for that yellow piss build-up in the toilet – I would not be outdone by my own house.

‘In actual fact I didn’t do any cleaning but I picked up things from the floor and ran the vacuum cleaner about the place. I concentrated my efforts on the lasagne and tried to consciously make it with love, but I found it almost impossible and couldn’t keep count of the quantity of ingredients . . . it was going to be a disaster. Soon I was crying tears into the béchamel sauce – I don’t know why I was so weepy: Period? Pills? Deep sense of failure? – which I found strangely fascinating. I stirred them into the mix, popped another pill and told myself how stupid I was, how lucky I was to have what I had in my life: my beautiful children, my wonderful parents, a good husband despite everything.