It took everything I’d got. All the tattered shreds of courage and determination that had probably not been that courageous or determined to begin with, but from some previously untapped reserves, as midday rolled around, Daniel returned to find me sitting at the kitchen table chopping an onion, Hope burbling in her chair. Showered, hair brushed and dressed in clothes suitable for leaving the house.

‘Okay, so I can’t bear another sandwich and tin of watery soup. Having searched every cranny in your kitchen, and what I presume is meant to be a pantry, the best I can come up with is an omelette.’

‘Great.’ Daniel went to give his daughter a kiss. ‘Did you have a nice morning, Hope?’ He stopped then, and looked around. ‘You’ve cleaned up.’

I shrugged. ‘I’ve made a start. Hope helped.’ I nodded to where she was banging a clean sponge onto the table.

It had been an exhausting start. After taking an absurd amount of time figuring out how to extricate Hope and me from my bed without waking her up, I’d gently placed her in the cot I found in what must be Daniel’s room, and taken it from there (Daniel’s room, unsurprisingly, followed the shabby unchic décor of the rest of the farmhouse, it was a health and safety hazard just kicking my way through the debris on the floor to reach the cot). By the time she’d woken up, I was clean and dry and had put my bedding and pyjamas in the washing machine and sorted through the rest of my stuff. I fed her the bottle, following the instructions Daniel had left on the kitchen countertop about how to warm it up first, then I stuck her in the baby chair and took a survey of the surroundings.

I thought about the sparkling kitchen in the Tufted Duck and shuddered at the comparison. I had reached a point in my life where I’d little idea of who I really was, apart from someone I didn’t like very much, but one thing I did know was that before all the madness started, I was a woman who knew how to get on my hands and knees and clean.

So that’s what I did for the next hour and a half. I demolished the mountain of greasy pots in the Belfast sink, first scrubbing until I revealed the beautiful white porcelain beneath the grime. I wiped every crumb and unidentifiable sticky stain from the oak worktops, moving the microwave, toaster and everything else onto the tiled floor before I was satisfied. I then cleaned them all before placing them back again. Next, I wiped the cupboard doors, which turned out to be a pale cream instead of the yellowy-beige they’d been before.

At that point, I ran out of hot water and energy, so I gave up and started looking for some lunch.

‘I don’t think I can do any more today, but tomorrow I’ll tackle the fridge and the oven. That is, if it’s okay for me to stay on for another couple of days.’ I picked up the knife and focused on chopping the rest of the onion. ‘I kind of feel like this is something I can do for Charlie. Does that make sense?’