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hate the bed and its soft, suffocating embrace. I would like to leave this room, but I can’t. I feel safe in here. Or, as safe as I feel anywhere, which is not very.
    How fucking stupid is that? I can’t leave my own bedroom. Me, who used to fly across the world and get on a plane without a moment’s thought. I have been getting on and off aeroplanes on my own since I was ten years old. I am fiercely independent. I am fierce. Or so people tell me. Used to tell me. I never used to be so afraid. When I was one of his editors, I used to stand up against Rupert Murdoch, arguing with him. I used to be so brave. I used to be somebody.
    I am still somebody.
    Aren’t I?
    But who?
    I am somebody who can’t leave her bedroom, somebody who can’t walk across a road to buy a newspaper. I start to cry. I hate crying. I hate these tears that come, unbidden, at any time of day.
    My cat, Bert, comes and sits next to me and purrs. When I do not respond, he gently bats my wet cheeks with his paw, first one side, and then the other. He keeps the claws sheathed so his paw feels like a velvet powder puff.
    Clever cat.
    He used to be a hunter, a champion mouser, when we had a garden. Now he follows me around the flat, turning somersaults for my amusement or butting his head against my idle hands, demanding attention. He cries a lot too, his calls echoing through the apartment.
    I never used to cry. I hardly ever shed a tear. I spent a whole life not in tears. And that, according to one therapist, is my problem. Is this all it is then? Is this simply forty years of collected tears?
    ‘Have a good cry. You’ll feel better.’
    Stupid, I think, furiously. Stupid.
    I remember a nurse, in the psychiatric unit. She was Jamaican, wore her hair in braids fastened with bright glass beads. They hung in a brilliant curtain over the stiff shoulders of her starched white uniform. Her nose was perfect, straight and beautiful, and she had a wide, white smile.
    She held my hand at four in the morning, as I cried. They’d given me sleeping pills, enough, they said, to fell an ox. I had to take them sitting in bed because they were so strong. They said I might pass out if I took them standing up. Two hours later, I was still wide awake, walking up and down the empty corridors, up and down, trying to walk away the tears.
    The nurse came and got me, led me back to my room and put me in bed, then sat with me, holding my hand.
    ‘Have a good cry,’ she said, ‘you’ll feel better.’
    I shouted at her. Her bright smile dimmed, and went out. I hated myself for shouting, but it seemed so important to be understood.
    ‘It won’t,’ I shouted. ‘Crying won’t make me feel better. I cry and I cry and I never feel any better. Why does nobody understand that?’
    Why does nobody understand that these are tears without a beginning or an end? I thought sadness had a beginning and an end. And a middle. A story, if you like. I was wrong.
    She said, ‘Has something happened?’
    I ducked my head, plucked at the sheet. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Nothing has happened.’
    She patted my hand.
    I must stop this, I think. I must stop these tears, stop these thoughts. Perhaps if I stand up, they will stop. Perhaps if I get dressed, perhaps if I try to be me, they will go away.
    I take off my nightdress. It is old soft white linen. I have always collected vintage linen. Now it is tattered and stained and sad. I no longer launder and starch it. I am still in my nightie at four in the afternoon.
    It is shocking and, shockingly, I don’t care.
    I pull on an old cashmere sweater and leggings. They are black. The sweater is large and comforting. The leggings are baggy and comfortable. I have been wearing these same clothes for weeks, months even. I used to work in fashion, to write about it weekly. I love good clothes. My wardrobe was once filled with designer labels. Some of them remain. I look at them and think that if only I could get those clothes on, that I might, once