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called Globus hystericus , a psychological term for ‘lump in the throat’ given to it by Freud. Of course, it must be Freud. Of course, it must manifest most often in women. My psychiatrist’s expression is grave. He knows that I resent that association of hysteria and women.
    Even so, I am comforted by the word ‘symptom’ and its cool, empirical note. The reality, even if the lump in my throat is not actually real, is not comforting. It hurts, like a knotted rope thick around my neck, the knot pressed hard to my windpipe. And it never goes away. It is the sensation you get when you are struggling to hold back tears, the tight, aching ball that grows and grows even as you try to swallow it down. I read, somewhere, that crying can relieve the symptoms. It can’t, or not for me anyway. I cry and I cry. I cry so much that sometimes I am astonished there is any water left in my body.
    I close my eyes. Time passes. I don’t know how much time. Is it day or is it night? I hear kids shouting on the streets. ‘Fucking wanker.’ School must be out. The shouts are too loud, banging in my head. I put a pillow over my face and push it down to cover my ears. I feel suffocated. The monster rears in my throat. I take the pillow away again.
    The shouts diminish, gradually. It is so dark. Why is it so dark? Am I awake? Am I alive? I am. Fuck. I want more vodka, I want a sleeping pill, I want anything to stop me being awake, or alive, but I force myself out of bed to make a cup of tea and a cucumber sandwich. It is the only thing I can eat. That’s if I eat at all.
    I slice the cucumber thin, shave butter off a cold block, and lay it on squares of foamy white bread. I hate white bread. Don’t I? I used to. I cut the crusts off, slice the sandwich in neat triangles, and put it on a white plate.
    Once I have made the sandwich, I don’t know what to do with it, or where to go. I stand in the kitchen for a while, staring at the plate, at the steaming mug of tea. I remember this mug, remember buying it and how it had to be white and of a certain thickness of china and the handle must be curved just so.
    I was standing in Heal’s, during the sale, and I bought six mugs, at half price. They came in a thick brown cardboard box, held shut by wide black staples. It took me hours to get those staples out.
     
     
    A friend called the other day.
    ‘How are you?’ she said.
    The sun was shining, the sky a merciless blue. It was only eleven in the morning but I had been awake since three twenty. I was in bed because, as usual, I could think of nowhere else to go. I said that I was feeling low. Low is the depressive’s euphemism for despair.
    She said: ‘How can you be depressed on a day like this?’
    I wanted to say: ‘If I had flu, would you ask me how I could be sick on a day like this?’
    I said nothing. She meant well.
    People send me cards. The images on the front are inoffensive watercolours of flowers or bland, abstract art. Inside, they write that they are sorry to hear that I’ve been unwell. That they have always thought of me as ‘such a strong person’. My sickness has a moral tone. I am reduced, made feeble. I think, well there is some truth in that. I am a shadow of the self I used to be.
     
     
    I feel caged, suddenly, impossibly restless. It goes like this, inertia and then profound agitation. I must do something. But what? My daughter, Molly, is with Jonathan, her dad, for three more days. She lives with him for half of the time.
    I miss her so.
    I am so glad she is not here. The effort of trying to be that person she knows as Mummy is overwhelming.
    I want to say to her that I am sorry, I am sorry that it is me who has taken her mother’s place. I want to tell her that she deserves better, that she should have a mother like the mother I used to be, who laughs and bakes and loses gracefully when her daughter cheats at Monopoly. But I can’t. I can’t tell her that her mother has gone, that her mother is lost.
    It