4th Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2016
Copyright © Miranda Sawyer 2016
Miranda Sawyer asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780007521081
Ebook Edition © ISBN: 9780007509157
Version: 2017-04-11
For S, P and F
‘Death is the dark backing that a mirror needs if we are to see anything’
Humboldt’s Gift, Saul Bellow
‘You’re going to have to fucking swallow this whole fucking life and let it grow inside you like a parasite’
Malcolm Tucker, The Thick of It
Contents
The start is always quiet. Even when the event is catastrophic, when it’s sudden and violent and crashes in, a meteor blazing from the sky to change everything you know – even then, what people say is: ‘It happened out of the blue. Everything was normal. Nothing seemed any different. It was a complete shock.’
When what is happening is gradual, when it seeps under the door, like water or smoke, then the start is even quieter. It’s silent. You don’t notice it at all.
Middle age is a time of settled status, when your achievements, your experience and your knowledge knit together to create sustenance and prestige, and you are taken seriously, valued as a high-contributing member of society.
‘You’re a smelly bum-bum,’ says F, my daughter. Her face is full of sneer and delight. ‘And when you die, I can have all of the sweeties that are in the tin up there. And I can go to Africa to see the funny cows that Miss telled us about. And I can have your shoes that are sparkly.’
We were talking about us not having a garden, about moving flat maybe, probably not. I was feeling frustrated.
‘But, you know, feelings aren’t facts,’ said my husband, S. He had been saying this a lot to me: ‘Feelings aren’t facts.’
What you feel is not what is actually happening here.
S is an emotional man, and he uses his mantras to reassure himself as much as me. He was right. The facts remained; they were unchanging.