‘Upstairs, little people are still running all over the place – they’re probably playing sardines or water-bombs. I even find myself thinking about the mess I’ll have to clear up later on . . . You see, what I can’t get my head around is how everything is exactly how it always is except I’m not there. I am superfluous. I have been replaced. I am just a ghost on the outside looking in. And, ghost-like, I shrink into the wet bushes at the side of the window to crouch and watch proceedings. I can’t be more than twelve inches from the sink, not six feet from the table. In a way I am with them. I watch Karl get up, a gag on his lips, more laughter. I see the way his hand touches Ness’s back as he goes past her – it might have looked casual to any observer but I see the way her body responds, their own intimate language, the validation she gives him. Is that all we’re looking for in a lover? I hate him with his simple needs and his treacherous hands. He goes to the fridge and takes out another bottle of wine. I can see directly inside the fridge. It’s full. I see things I would never have bought: cans of Coke, pork pies, cheap sausages, expensive wine. I look for signs of me in there but there aren’t any. How has all trace of me disappeared so quickly? Then he shuts the fridge door and a school form wafts up into the air, revealing a photograph of me underneath: smiling, safe, sane. But the visit to the Horniman Museum, or wherever, flaps over my face like a veil.

‘I sit there for hours, scissors in hand, the point digging into my palm every time I see some intimacy between them. I don’t have a plan. I just want to be home. I get up to see better when Josh and Evie come back to the house, under the guise of having bought some lollies for the younger kids, but in reality they were fresh from the sheets; I can see their wonder, the wholly self-consuming appetite of first love. Annie, Polly and the younger kids come thundering down the stairs for lollies. I press my nose to the pane to see my little love. If anyone looks this way they might see the strange sight that is me, but no one does.