Hitched tight, we moved to a red-brick bungalow bounded by a red-brick walled garden—neat as a pin, pinned in a red-brick estate, where floral-aproned matrons cooled bread by gosssiping windows and exchanged pie recipes; but because, after thrashing rain, I could sycamore-seed spin, inhaling petrichor—sometimes I could breathe.

Heather’s body is knackered and her brain runs intermittently on adrenaline, somewhere in Yorkshire, usually around three a.m.—when she does the only thing she can and spews words at the page in the hope of redemption.