I was envious of her too: of her mental strength. How wonderful not to have been to those dark places. It probably just wasn’t in her nature. I liked that about her – she was straightforward. You’d know best, but I’ve come to believe that it’s in the DNA, that self-destruct button; you’re either suicidal or you’re not. It doesn’t mean that you’ve gone any lower than anyone else; it’s just the way your brain is programmed to deal with things. To some of us, death feels like an attractive, proactive solution to a problem. And at the time it appears to be by far the more sensible alternative to carrying on. It seems quite obvious to me that risk-takers are more likely to chuck it all in. My first suicide attempt happened at fifteen. I got pregnant the first time I had sex and it truly felt like the end of the world. I went to the bathroom cabinet in my parents’ house and swallowed every pill I could find in the cupboard. Sadly for me, they were old hippies and it turned out I’d OD’d on tree bark and ginseng.

‘I was on antidepressants,’ I told her, just because I felt like it. ‘After Annie’s birth, I took a dip.’ She didn’t really react or appear to judge me. Thank God there’s not quite the same stigma attached that there used to be.

We were both lying back on the grass, looking up at the sky, pretty stoned now, talking about cause and effect, accidents and fate, serendipity and coincidence. We were watching the eagle and the eagle seemed to be watching us. It kept swooping and climbing – we reckoned it was getting the odd waft of sweet sinsemilla up there, had the old rabbit-munchies and was boring the arse off the other eagles. We chuckled away for a while before drifting off into our own worlds.

‘What was this guy like you were in love with?’ she said, her voice breaking my reverie. I paused.

‘Which guy?’

‘The guy before Karl. You said you thought you’d found the one.’

I sighed. That guy. My God, how do you describe it, Dr. R? Have you had it? Did Si Hubby make you feel as if you’d been half asleep all your life? Did he wake you up and fill you to the brim? Have you suffered from that particular madness? Or wasn’t it Si Hubby at all?

‘I’d known him years ago. He’d been my professor at uni. But then I bumped into him a few years later at a party and . . . it was . . . it was complicated.’

She was inhaling and turned her head to me with a raised eyebrow. ‘You mean he was married.’

I raised an eyebrow back at her. ‘It turned out he was, yes.’

‘How long were you together?’

‘On and off for four years.’