‘Right,’ I say, though I now have severe doubts about Jonathan the dancing giraffe from Rickmansworth with the repressive Baptist parents.

‘Wel , maybe he’s just shy . . .’ I trail off. ‘How was the snogging?’

Cathy looks around again. ‘It was OK. You know? Sometimes it’s just not that great. And we were quite drunk.’

‘But you like him?’

She stares into space. ‘Yeah, I do. He’s real y funny. And we have nothing in common. I like that. He’s different from me.’ She shifts in her chair again. ‘Everyone at work’s just like me. Always in suits. Serious. Reads the FT.’ She pushes her lips out. ‘That’s why I liked his profile, and when we were emailing. He just sounded real y fun.’ She stops. Her voice is soft. ‘I just want to meet someone, you know? And it’s hard.’

I remember the last date I went on before I ran into Oli. A man with a signet ring and fat, sausage-like fingers, talking about himself al evening and how his friends thought he was ‘completely crazy, up for anything, me!’ Yel owish blond thin hair, red face like a baby, eyes that looked anywhere but into mine, and I sat there in silence and thought to myself, Perhaps he’ll do, perhaps I’m being too picky, that’s what everyone says.

‘I know,’ I say. ‘I know it’s hard.’

‘Ha.’ Cathy looks at me. ‘Like you’d know.’

‘Oi,’ I say. She claps her hand over her mouth. ‘Shit, Nat, I’m real y sorry!’ Red stains her white cheeks. ‘That’s so tactless of me!’

I lean forward on my stool and pat her head, which is al I can reach. ‘It’s fine! Honestly, don’t worry. I wouldn’t know, anyway. I haven’t been out there for ages.’

‘Do you think you wil be, soon, then?’

‘Don’t know,’ I say, stretching my fingers out in front of me. ‘We need to talk. He keeps cal ing, he wants to meet up again. I just haven’t wanted to see him.’

‘He wants to come back, doesn’t he?’ Cathy asks. I nod. ‘Of course he does!’ she says, relieved. ‘You and Oli – you’re together for ever! I mean, you can’t split up!’

‘He slept with someone else,’ I say. ‘Don’t you think that’s a big deal?’

Cathy knits her hands together. Normal y so sure of herself, she looks around. ‘Yes, of course it is. But if you’re asking me if it’s something to end your marriage over . . . I don’t know. I’m not in it.’ She smiles, knowing it’s a bad answer. ‘I can’t make that judgement.’

‘Wel , I am in it, and I have made that judgement,’ I say. ‘I just don’t know if I can be with him again.’

‘Wow.’ Cathy opens and shuts her mouth. ‘Seriously? But your life – together.’

‘I know.’ My throat is dry. ‘Weren’t you going to start trying for a baby soon, too?’ Now I am knitting my fingers together. I can’t look at her, I don’t want to lose it. I push down the sound I want to make, push it back down somewhere at the back of my throat. ‘No.’

‘Oh. I thought you were.’

‘Wel , we’re not. He doesn’t want to. He said he wasn’t ready.’

Cathy flicks a look at me from under her lashes, and doesn’t pursue this. Instead she says, ‘Do you think he’s sorry?’

‘Oh, yes,’ I say. ‘I think he’s very sorry he’s been chucked out of his nice flat with the big TV and al his DVDs and crap and someone who knows how he likes his coffee in the morning. I think he misses that a lot.’

‘Come on,’ Cathy says. ‘It’s more than that.’

I’m not sure it is for him, and I can’t blame him either. Your relationship is in your home. Your home is where the two of you are for the most part.

And your home is where you have your stuff and where you chil out after a bad day. Even after everything that’s happened, our flat is stil our flat. It’s where I have my books, where my clothes hang in cupboards, where I keep the letters Granny wrote me, the postcards Jay sent me, the Zabar’s mug I bought in New York with Cathy. I liked having space to put stuff, letting our things mingle together. In Bryant Court, Mum and I improvised almost everything. Her chest of drawers was the trunk she had at boarding school and our clothes hung on a wire rack she bought at a fair; the shelves in the kitchen were too narrow to store anything other than smal spice jars, which was ironic as neither of us ever cooked and we lived on takeout or ready-meals and occasional y pasta. So our plates and glasses and mugs were al stacked in a corner, the cutlery in a large patterned glass jar she’d got in Italy.

‘It’s a marriage, not just a home,’ Cathy says sternly. ‘For both of you.’

We had a home together, the two of us, until Oli went and ruined it. But the thing is, I think I want that home, I want us to be together. I don’t want to be out there again. I think I do stil love him. That’s the trouble.

Chapter Twenty-Three

After Cathy leaves, I do some tidying up and sorting out. I put things away, I arrange my tools in my drawer under the workbench. I update my contacts folder on my laptop (a new state-of-the-art Mac, which I convinced myself – helped by Oli, it’s true – I had to have for work, when any old computer would basical y have done). I email a few shops, some friends who are fel ow jewel ers to find if they’l be at the next trade fair, in ExCel in May, and I get an application form from Tower Hamlets for a grant. Though even this feels wrong; I don’t think I deserve the money.

What I need to do, I know, is keep on like this. Keep doing things. Keep coming to the studio and actual y making stuff, having a plan, having tea with the others, instead of using this place as an escape from the lonely, echoing flat, fil ed with Oli’s stuff. I open the unopened letters from the bank, putting them in a pile. I make a list of things to do. And as I stand up and stretch, slinging my bag over my shoulder, I put my sketchbook in the centre of the table, so it’l be the first thing I see when I come in tomorrow. Feeling suddenly hopeful, I close the door behind me.

As I walk past Ben’s studio I’m about to knock, but I can hear him and Tania talking so I pause, listening for a second.

I can tel by the tone of their voices – slightly louder and higher than usual – that it’s not the kind of conversation you want to interrupt. Normal y I’d knock anyway, or cal out ‘Bye’ but perhaps I need to stop hanging out with them instead of going home. Yes, I’m going home.

I say goodnight to Jamie and as I have my hand on the door I open my bag, quickly, just checking. Yes, Cecily diary’s stil there, nestling at the top of my things, folded up inside my sketchbook.

One of the weirdest things about my ‘situation’ at the moment is the label ing of it. Do I stil say ‘we’ when I’m talking about where ‘we’ live or how long ago ‘we’ bought the new flat-screen TV? It feels so odd, yet to say ‘my status-TBC-husband and I’ is also weird. ‘We’ live on Princelet Street, off Brick Lane, a couple of minutes’ walk from my studio.

When I first left col ege I worked for two years on a stal in Camden Market and lived in West Norwood, so I know what a long commute is like. I was only there in the mornings, too – in the afternoons I’d do my own stuff – so it was nearly three hours of travel ing for three hours of work, not a good exchange system. I had about fifty pence a week left to play with, if that.

We moved here after much negotiation. Oli flatly refused to cross the river, especial y not to live that far out. He wanted to stay in North London.

We compromised on East London, and it was one of our better decisions, because I can’t imagine living anywhere else now. I have lived in West, East and South and worked in North London, and this is where we both wanted to be. I don’t know what ‘we’ think about that any more, but I love it here, and though East London isn’t everyone’s favourite biscuit, I wouldn’t live anywhere else. I know where I want to be. Until a decade ago or so round here, Spitalfields, Shoreditch, Whitechapel, al of it was a real no-man’s-land, abandoned since the days of Jack the Ripper, but now it is quite hilariously trendy. The slums they cleared people out of in the sixties, moving them into new-builds, are now Georgian terraces sel ing for half a mil ion quid.

My road is not as posh as the great Huguenot weavers’ houses on Fournier Street, which is now almost al private houses or museums masquerading as private houses, each front door now a tasteful olive, dark grey or black, shutters immaculately reproduced in the original style and painted to match. Our street is one block up, a bit quieter, the houses a bit more dilapidated. If you half-close your eyes, you real y can imagine some weaver hurrying back along the cobbled street through the mud and rain and opening the dark, sturdy front door to be greeted by a blaze of light and a warming fire. It feels less like something out of a film set and more like a place where people have lived and stil live now. People like us.

I walk home that afternoon, past the guys pushing the empty rails from Petticoat Market, past the sweet Victorian primary school where it is home-time. Children are flooding out in their blue sweaters, throwing themselves against their parents, jabbering excitedly to each other. Two little girls are in a minibus, kissing each other and playing with each other’s hair, while an adult shovels more children in next to them. I stand and watch them, smiling, until one of the parents stares at me. Embarrassed, I walk on, pul ing my scarf more tightly around me in the cold, hitching my overnight bag onto my shoulder.

I skid on a puddle and nearly slip. ‘Mind how you go,’ says one of the ever-present waiters who stand outside the curry houses al day, trying to entice punters inside. ‘It’s cold, freezing, be careful, yes?’

It is freezing, I feel it now. I am sick of this winter. It’s been never-ending. It’s almost March, and stil so cold. I look up at the grey-white sky, heavy with cloud. The contrast with Cornwal is total, in fact. There are no trees on Brick Lane, only brightly il uminated signs, flashing LED lights, misleading banners (‘Winner of Best Curry Restaurant’ – Where? When? According to whom?), comforting, spicy smel s which make my confused stomach lurch with nausea and at the same time growl with hunger.

It is past five and getting dark. It is a night for staying in, for going to the Taj Stores opposite and loading up on poppadoms and chutney, it’s a night for wrapping oneself in scarves and blankets and curling up on the sofa. I think how nice a takeaway from the Lahore Kebab House would be.

If Oli was here perhaps he’d get it on his way back from work. If Oli was here we’d watch a few more episodes of Mad Men on the new flat-screen TV, and then I’d put my head in his lap and half-read a book while he watches the footbal .

I turn into Princelet Street, waving at another waiter, standing outside the Eastern Eye Balti House. ‘How was the funeral?’ he says, bowing his head slightly as if acknowledging it. He wears a pale blue waistcoat and shirt. He must be freezing.

‘It was . . . fine,’ I say, touched. I wil never know how to answer that question properly. It was . . . funereal, thanks for asking.

‘That’s life,’ the waiter cal s after me, nodding philosophical y. ‘Life and death.’

Just as I am getting into the flat, my mobile rings. I struggle with my overnight bag and my scarf, getting tangled up as I delve into my handbag to find the phone and press it immediately to my ear.

‘Hel o?’

‘Hel o? Darling? Where are you?’

It’s my mother. I freeze. ‘I’m at home,’ I say, after a moment. I dump my overnight bag on the floor. ‘Er – where are you? Are you stil in Cornwal ?’ I stare at the bag.

‘Yes,’ says Mum. ‘Off tomorrow evening.’

‘Um—’ I don’t know what to say to her. There’s a silence. ‘So . . . how’s the clearing up going?’

‘It’s OK,’ she says. ‘Fine. We’re seeing the solicitors tomorrow, to sort out the foundation and the funding. Archie and I.’

‘Oh, yes. Is – is Louisa stil there?’

My mother lowers her voice. ‘God, yes. Of course she is. I wish she’d just leave, to be honest, but no . . .’ She pauses, as though she’s looking around. ‘She’s stil here. Pretending to be the dutiful daughter, even though she’s not.’

I am recasting everything in my mind, now: everything I thought I knew. I knew my mother and Louisa didn’t get on that wel , but I thought it was simply because they’re so different. Now I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what actual y happened that summer, after al , but I can tel Mum was difficult even then, based on just a few pages of her sister’s diary. Does my mother know what they say about her? That behind her back people whisper about her, like those old friends of Granny’s at the funeral, that they say, You know, it was never proved, but Miranda . . . yes, that one over there, you know they always had trouble with her. They say she kil ed her sister. Oh, it wasn’t an accident . . .