I’ve forgotten all of the small routines that I used to perform completely automatically. I even had to stop and think about how I went about buying a train ticket. Needless to say, my early-morning commuter train is packed to the rafters, and it was infinitely better to be getting up at the crack of dawn to go and view mountain vistas and glorious sunrises in the Himalayas than it is to be squashed against someone’s sweaty armpit all the way into the city of London. I’ve never seen a sunrise in St Albans despite living there for most of my life. It makes me wonder why.

I thought my memories of Nepal would start to grow dim, that a faint veil would come down over them or the fluttery curtain of day-to-day living would flick back and forth, obscuring them from view. But, if anything, they’ve grown brighter and sharper in contrast to my own life. And I’m holding on to them like treasured childhood possessions that I really can’t bear to let go. And the brightest of all my memories is Dean.

I’m squeezed out of Embankment Underground station like toothpaste out of a tube, and cross the Hungerford Bridge to the offices of My Baby and My Divorce. It’s a freezing-cold day, but not freezing with the tang of snow-capped peaks, just bone-jarringly freezing with an icy wind that’s creeping inside the vulnerable openings of my coat, the neck, the ends of the sleeves—it’s teasing inside the hem above my boots to numb my knees. I wish it were my brain that would go numb instead. And I wish these were flat, clonky walking boots instead of three-inch tottering things. I’m determined to abandon all hint of the sensible, maternity-type clothing I was so diligently collecting, so my pre-pregnancy flattie boots are shoved in the back of my wardrobe and all my impractical heels have now been hastily reorganised to centre stage on the Allen shoe-rack in order to enhance my attempt to glam up again. Another thing I’d forgotten in my brief absence from real life was how hard and how uncomfortable stilettos are. At this moment I’m regretting my rashness. I should have eased myself gently back into ridiculous fashion toe-crushers. The balls of my feet are burning and my calves feel as if they’re about to cramp. No wonder they’re called killer heels.

The sky is dappled grey and white with black splotches like a piebald horse, and every single person, without exception, is huddled into a big, black overcoat. The rhythmical, plodding footsteps clonk on the steel bridge like the march of some mindless automaton. The whole landscape looks like a photographic negative and I can’t help feeling that I’m trapped in the wrong life.