When Michael died I was tipped over the edge. I was beyond grief.

My mother was always in those films where it’s the end of the world and a meteor‘s about to hit London; there’s only six people left, and one of them‘s in purple underwear. That was always my mother, running from this meteor in purple underwear and spraining her ankle.

I don’t remember my parents together, ever: my father was much older, and really only interested in collecting magazines and bathroom suites; we were the only family in the area to have a bathroom suite on the lawn.