My parents are the epitome of a tragic love story. And I am just a spectator, watching from the stalls. They bicker, then argue, throwing allegations like grenades while I cower in my room, trying to avoid the flying shrapnel. I have often wondered why they are still married. They don’t seem to like each other very much – and yet there is an underlying sense that they wouldn’t be able to exist without each other.

There is still beauty in my mother beneath the skeletal limbs and sunken cheeks, as well as a wit that occasionally bubbles to the surface when he manages to make her laugh. But those moments are becoming a rarity. When he is in London through the week, she wanders through this massive house like a phantom, using cigarettes and alcohol to quell her appetite, which feed her paranoia in return… but there is never a question of her going to the city to be with him. I suspect he needs the space away from her to fortify himself for their weekends together. She can’t bring herself to leave him though, which she should because she is probably right about him, but she has gone way past being able to function independently. She can plan and host a fantastic dinner party for prospective investors, turning on her glamour and charm as necessary, but she can’t manage a cheque book or even find her way to a supermarket for bread and milk. That’s the female role model you want in your life, isn’t it?

“If that’s true, why don’t you just divorce him?” I say.

She moves quick as lightning and strikes out at me, catching me on the cheek with her ring. “Get out! Get out!”

Later, as I sit on my bed working on a short story idea, I can hear her shouting into the telephone in her bedroom, her voice nasal and slurred from the martinis she washed down her non-existent dinner with. Soon after, she bounds into my bedroom, her face light and happy, the shadows flushed away for the time being. She flounces onto the edge of my bed.

“He’s taking me on holiday.”

“Who?”

“Your father, of course! He’s taking me with him when he goes to New York later this month and we’re going to take some time afterwards to travel around together. We’ll be gone at least six weeks, he says!” She is beaming. She doesn’t mention the lurid red cut on my cheek that I will take great care to cover up with make-up tomorrow.

“That’s great, Mother.”

“You’ll be ok on your own.”

It’s not a question.

“You’re seventeen now and Martha is here. You’ll be fine.”