Then I started to clean the house. From cupboards and shelves I retrieved every bottle of bleach and disinfectant and polish in the house. With cloths and brushes and sprays, I scoured and scraped every surface. I filled two large bin bags with rubbish and things that weren’t quite rubbish and things that weren’t really rubbish at all but that I thought I’d be better off without or that I could do without. I thought of one of my grandmothers—my father’s mother—who had seemingly spent her entire adult life cleaning. Even the thought of her conjured up a smell of pine-scented air freshener. For her, cleanliness was a form of display, a recurrent demonstration that she had the cleanest lavatory of all of her friends. For me it was about purifying, cutting away, eliminating.

I checked the time. It was just after seven. When I had got rid of ten items of clothing, I could have a drink. It was easy. I instantly disposed of clothes I’d kept out of sentiment, because I’d worn them as a teenager or at college, or I’d been given them by a boyfriend or bought them in a particular place, that time in Queensland or Seville. As I crammed them into another bin bag, I saw that I had put in far more than ten. Twenty at least. I deserved an extra-large drink as a reward for that. And if I drank a whole bottle of wine, I could throw away the bottle.

There were eight in the little rack in the kitchen. I found the oldest wine I had. We’d bought it in France a couple of years earlier for what had seemed a lot of money at the time, ten or twenty euros. It had been for a special occasion that had never come. I opened it and poured myself a glass. I sipped. It tasted bitter. Was it corked? I’d never quite known what that meant. It would do, though. Perhaps it needed to be drunk with food. I didn’t have anything that seemed suitable so I toasted some bread and spread butter on it. I munched the toast and finished the glass of wine. Then I looked in the cupboard and found a tin of olives I’d forgotten. I opened the tin and cut my finger on the lid. I wrapped a tissue around it and poured myself another glass of wine. I ate an olive. Everything I ate, everything I drank, was emptying the house just a little more.

When the doorbell rang, I hadn’t quite finished the second glass of wine, but I still felt lightheaded. I opened the door. It was Johnny.

“You’d better come in,” I said wearily.