The house had a window that never closed properly. In winter you could hear the wind negotiate its way through the gap, and I would lie awake listening to it, imagining it was someone coming to take me somewhere warmer.

I was nine the first time I understood that other children's houses were quiet at night. I remember standing in my friend's kitchen while her mother buttered toast and hummed, and feeling something close to grief — not because I wanted her mother, but because I hadn't known that humming was allowed.

You learn early how to read a room. The weight of footsteps in a corridor tells you which version of the evening is coming. I could tell from the way a door closed whether I should stay where I was or make myself very small.

Nobody teaches you that this is a skill. Nobody tells you that you will carry it into adulthood, into offices and relationships and friendships, still reading rooms that hold no danger at all.

For a long time I thought the window was the saddest thing in that house. It took me twenty years to realise it was the only part of it that let the light in.

The morning everything changed did not announce itself. There was no thunder, no warning, only the ordinary sound of a kettle and the ordinary sound of my own voice saying a word I had never said out loud before.