Meditation had been stressful for Mary ever since she first tried it two months ago, and she rarely persevered nowadays. She’d been at it only one minute, when the intensity and uselessness of doing nothing but breathing created a current that seemed to Taser her to the mat. Mary acknowledged the shuddering feeling, the tsunami of screams in her chest, the insatiable itch of shins she’d scarred attempting to sate these last months. She acknowledged these terrible feelings, shared them with the universe, and waited for the zzzzzzzzzzzzz to go away like the horny Zen abbot promised it would. (Maybe she’d misunderstood the abbot. Probably, as she’d come up with three comedy sets during class.) She was still Tasered, even after the second joint … or because of it? Mary did not want to answer that question. The notion that wine and weed might also move out of home – just, nup.

Mary bade farewell to the yoga mat – till next time, she namasteed – and took head seat at the kitchen table, which had been un-eat-on-able since she’d bought the thousand-piece jigsaw on eBay a week and a half ago. She pondered her progress: she had divided bits of the Cinque Terre into fifteen piles, and she had matched a total of twenty edges. With intense method, Mary subdivided and scanned the pile of edge pieces with sky included – left to right, and back again; left to right and back again. None of them fitted together. There was sky with cloud, sky with less cloud, dark sky, light sky: was that a match? She turned the music four notches above what was socially acceptable to Nora in 1/1, poured a third glass of wine, and slowly moved edge piece with light sky #1 towards edge piece with light sky #2, confident and celebratory that they’d fit together the way she and Roddie did.

Fuck this fucking jigsaw puzzle. It was as impossible as knitting.

Mary changed into the lace teddy she’d bought as a reward for maintaining the five-two diet for five days. She adjusted her cleavature and pose, deciding on and holding her choice, which was sitting on the end of the bed in high-heeled boots, her back straight, tits forwards, chin up and over the fence, and then FaceTimed the man who, twenty-seven years earlier, having just shaken her hand and established her name, leaned in and said: ‘Tell me ten things about yourself, Mary Shields.’ This opening, and what happened next, meant they had to be together.

‘One: I weigh nine stone eight today. Apparently, I had a kebab last night … It’s true what Rohypnol victims say: somehow, not remembering is the worst thing. Two is, I love kebabs. Three, I have no pants on.’

That was all Roddie needed to know. ‘The woman I shall marry, everybody!’ He tried to lift Mary hunter-gatherer manner, and almost managed to get her off the ground before changing tack. ‘Fancy a kebab?’

Mary said I do.