I stood, silent and rooted to the spot, as Sal stormed out. The door crashed shut behind her so violently that I didn’t know how the glass remained intact. Fury at the thought of her creepy convict son intruding into my house had already morphed into acute embarrassment and shame. How long had he stayed in my bedroom? How many pictures or videos did he take of me in that state? What if he’d . . . I could hardly bear to think the words . . . touched me?

My head fell forward and I squeezed my eyes shut. I felt my fingernails push deep into my palms.

How could I have allowed this to happen?

He could have done anything to me or my daughter. How fucking dare he?

Why on earth hadn’t Evie mentioned anything about him coming into the house?

I opened my eyes and walked over to the window. Pulling down the blinds, I locked the back door and went into the sitting room. In there, I closed the curtains, leaving just enough of a gap to let a little bit of light in. Without thinking, I picked up my phone and called Tara. I needed to speak to someone; needed to offload before I exploded.

My heart sank when the call went straight to Tara’s voicemail. I should have just ended the call but before I could think better of it, a torrent of anguished words poured out of my mouth and down the line.

I ranted about Bryony at work, Evie at school and about Colin the creep from next door. I was just about to embark on Mum’s attitude when a disembodied voice announced the voicemail was now full. I hadn’t even had a chance to ask how Tara was feeling.

I tossed my phone aside, annoyed at my own neediness.

A strong urge to hide away in the dark and never come out washed over me.

I grabbed my handbag and before I could think better of it, swallowed two tablets with cold tea I found in a mug on the floor, praying they’d work quicker than usual.

I felt desperate for a few hours of blissful oblivion. I couldn’t face the thoughts and possibilities that were ricocheting around my head.

A man in the house with my daughter, while I was sleeping. While I was completely out of it.

Before sinking down onto the couch, I remembered Mum’s sharp comment about cleaning up the mess. I snapped on the light and peered into the corner by the chair. My hand flew to my mouth and I stood for a few moments, blinking hard and trying in vain to process the evidence in front of me.

Two months before he died, Andrew had bought me an exquisite crystal glass vase for our tenth wedding anniversary. He’d had it engraved with our names and the date of our big day and I treasured it as the last thing he gave to me.

Now it lay in pieces in the corner of the room, broken beyond any hope of repair.

Only yesterday, I had carefully peeled off copious amounts of bubble wrap, washed it gently by hand and set it down by the fireplace.

That, I could remember. But how it got broken was a complete mystery.

Yet when I looked down at the splintered shards of crystal, I found myself flinching.

I took a step back. Something wasn’t right.

I was beginning to realise that little pieces were missing, ripped here and there from my memory, like sticking plasters, leaving smooth gaps of time that remained a mystery.

My hands began to shake.

I rushed upstairs to the bathroom, hung over the loo and stuck my fingers down my throat.

Twenty seconds later, the contents of my stomach were at the bottom of the pan, hopefully along with the two sedatives I’d just taken. I prayed I’d caught them in time.

Following a quick shower, I put on my fluffy dressing gown and came back downstairs. I ran a glass of cold water from the kitchen tap and took it through to the living room, sitting down in the gloom and trying to get my thoughts straight.

I knew, without any doubt, that the smartest, most effective thing I could do for myself right this second was to flush the remaining tablets down the toilet.

I wanted to do it, I really did.

I could just take the damn things out of my handbag, walk upstairs and flush them down the loo. And then I could go to my bedroom, open the shoebox under my bed, take out the birth, marriage and death certificates and reach for the other two small brown bottles hidden under there, full of tablets. I could flush those away too.

But even as I walked through the steps in my mind, I knew I couldn’t do it. Not yet.

Those tablets were all I had. They were the only buffer between me and a very messy meltdown. Since Andrew’s death, they had served as a dam against a tsunami of pain and grief that had been waiting to crush me.

I picked up the glass of water and gulped it down in one.

I couldn’t face getting rid of my sole defence, not yet. It wasn’t that I wasn’t going to do it, I just had to give myself time to get used to the idea. Grow stronger.

After all, it would be totally counterproductive to get rid of the pills and then find myself unable to function.

It was true that, most of the time, I felt ashamed to call myself a mother. Yet, pitiful as I was, I still managed to fulfil some parental duties most days. And that was preferable to finding myself trapped in some institution, leaving my daughter to face life without me.

I had to keep the tablets for the time being, purely as a safety net. I realised I couldn’t manage without them, but continually sabotaged myself by using them.

I was trapped, caught in my own personally created hell.