On my wedding night I hid under the bed to surprise my husband. His mother came in instead, sat down on the mattress above me, and put a call

I slept in that room. Next to him.

That is the detail that people find the most difficult and it is the one I am least sorry about.

Eleven days I said nothing, while solicitors did what solicitors do and while a woman in Leeds went through nine years of estate accounts.

I smiled at his mother twice in that time. I let her adjust my collar at a lunch.

And after my father, the first person I rang was his sister.

She let it go to voicemail. She rang back forty minutes later and did not say hello.

She said: you told him, didn’t you. In