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…she admonished, saying, ‘I think I hate you,� which meant she didn’t because ‘I think I hate you� is the same as ‘probably I hate you�, which is the same as ‘I don’t know if I hate you�, which is the same as ‘I don’t hate you, oh my God, my love, I love you, still love you, always, always have I loved you and never have I stopped loving you�.

after that I had three further encounters with longest friend from primary school. One was at her wedding.Then I met her a year after her wedding, this time at the funeral of her husband.Three months on from that I went to her own funeral when they buried her with her husband. This was in the renouncers� ‘the no-town cemetery�, ‘the no-time cemetery�, ‘the busy cemetery� or just simply, the usual place.

Meanwhile, somewhere at the back of this was the milkman wedged between us; also maybe-boyfriend being killed by this milkman wedged between us. At back of all there was the image of my sister, my first, eldest, perpetually grieving sister, sitting in our house in that awful silence, with that look on her face on her murdered ex-lover’s funeral day.

I’d be committing social suicide even to catch eyes with one of them in the street.So no thanks.Not keen to have a word,not now, not ever. These women, constituting the nascent feminist group in our area � and exactly because of constituting it � were firmly placed in the category of those way, way beyond-the-pale. The word ‘feminist� was beyond-the-pale. The word ‘woman� barely escaped beyond-the-pale.

Again, this was suggestion, with his continuing in that friendly, obliging vein, the one of doing me favours, of helping me out by taking my walking away, taking my running away, taking away maybe-boyfriend.

But it was mental hospitals, and it was mental breakdowns, which meant cover-up, which meant shame, which meant even more shame in his case because he was a man. Males and mental hospitals went together far less than females and mental hospitals went together. In a man’s case, this equalled a gender falling-down in pursuance of his duties, totalling a failure above all to keep face.

This was a deliberate withholding on my part because never had it been in my remit not to withhold from my mother because never had it been in her remit to get my message and to take me at my word.

ok, this one hits too close to home

It was just they didn’t want to hurt older relatives� feelings, such as those of their parents, their grandparents, their deceased forebears, their long-deceased fragile ancestors possibly set in ways easily to be affronted, especially by what the tenor of the media was calling ‘depravity, decadence, demoralisation, dissemination of pessimism, outrages to propriety and illicit immoral affairs�.