Oh Sailor, I thought, the little size of you. This is what it feels like when everything goes wrong, and by your own hand. When you are caught, cornered, the one to blame, when you discover something in your nature that you did not know was there and which you do not like. You know what, though? Confusion, shame, resentment, regret: it’s my area. D

We set out in life believing we will forge so many enduring bonds when really we are blessed with so few, no more than three or four if we are lucky, and one of mine was with a cat.

Now here I was, the lapsed vegetarian, in a butcher’s of all places, with a buggy of all things, buying half a pound of flesh I didn’t want. I glanced around the shop. Were we all wondering how it had come to this?

The people around me gave up on talking once you were born. They stopped exchanging ideas and thoughts; they just made noise. Constant, unrelenting, peevish noise. Not us. We three didn’t make a sound.

My husband used to answer the phone to me with Hey, pronouncing it in such a way I could hear he was smiling.

You think you’re over something when out of nowhere a tentacle grips you. Skeins of pain unspooling across time: there is no end to it, Sailor. We are walking landmines.

I’m always the one asking stupid questions. The world seems so much clearer to everybody else. I have no aptitude for the practicalities of this life. What can I possibly offer you?

A swathe of bluebells hovered like mist above the grass.

From the outside a woman cradling a newborn looks peaceful. A new mother is not peaceful but in a jittery state of high alert. We declare her serene so we can leave her to it. So we can behold the glittering surface, remark on its beauty, and walk away.