Angela hasn’t cried since 2005, which is a strangely specific fact to know about yourself, but crying has never really been Angela’s thing. There’s no dramatic reason for it, no childhood vow that nobody would ever see her tears and no carefully constructed emotional wall waiting for a therapist to dismantle; she simply isn’t a crier. Or she wasn’t, because sometime during the last eighteen months her tear ducts appear to have taken out a subscription and now barely a week go

You walk upstairs to get something. Halfway there, you’ve forgotten what it was. You stand on the landing hoping the sight of the bathroom might trigger some ancient neurological pathway that reminds you why you’ve made the journey, but nothing happens. You go back downstairs. Ten minutes later, you remember. You go upstairs again. You open your phone to send an email and somehow end up looking at the weather. You put the washing machine on without putting the washing in it.