Just then my mobile rings and I do a leap over the bed worthy of the Grand Slam rugby team to grab it, in case it’s Sam. But, of course, it’s not. Instead it’s, of all people, Joan. Wondering when exactly they can expect me? And did I need to get a spare key cut? She’s so helpful and nice in fact that I keep having to repeat her name just to check that this is in fact the same Joan I think it is. I tell her that I’ve only got until Thursday to clear out and miracle of miracles, she actually offers to come over in her car to help me shift my stuff.

Well, well, well, I think, hanging up and catching sight of the photo of Mum and Dad on my dressing table. Whaddya know? Maybe they made this minor miracle happen from beyond the grave. I continue packing with fresh vigour, in complete wonderment at just how spectacularly wrong I can be about people.

Half three

Joan arrives bit late but then, who am I to complain about the one decent human being who has actually offered to help me in my hour of need? She breezes in, groomed like a storm trooper in a bright, floral patterned dress with every single accessory matching, shoes, bag, the works. But then, why am I surprised? This is Joan. Everything always matches.

Anyway, the minute she gets here, she clicketty-clacks in on her scaffolding heels, surveying the place like a Japanese tourist in the Sistine Chapel and asking if she can have a good nose around. I say yes, of course, then offer her a coffee. She follows me into the kitchen and there’s a silence as we both look at each other, but neither of us has anything to say. The funny thing is, that now she’s here and it’s just the two of us on our own, there’s so much I want to tell her. Because maybe, after all these years, I’ve completely misjudged her and now I’m at the lowest ebb of my life, she’s turned into some kind of guardian angel that’ll get me through this horrible, horrific time.

Be ironic if, after all these years of me being busy despising her that now, at the ripe old age of twenty-nine, I did actually manage to forge some kind of working functional bond with her. Growing up, I had all the normal grievances you’d expect a kid to hold against any kind of surrogate guardian; Joan constantly taking Maggie and Sharon’s side in all rows against me, with the added complication of me resenting her for trying to take the place of a mother that she couldn’t possibly come near.

But if Maggie and Sharon were openly hostile to me, Joan was more…glacial. Frosty. I remember one time, when I was about eleven, she lost me in a huge department store and while I was terrified the whole time that I’d end up kidnapped by some pervert, the ordeal barely knocked a feather out of her. In fact, to this day I can distinctly remember the security guard finding me white-faced and frightened, wandering around the cosmetics hall, then handing me back to Joan. Poor man honestly looked as if he was weighing up whether or not to call in social services. Well, what was he supposed to think? My guardian was neither bothered that I was gone nor particularly relieved to have me back. She never as much as broke a sweat. But there you go. Some women just aren’t cut out for motherhood. And in a million years, I’d never have gone whining and complaining to Dad; he’d quite enough stress on his plate as it was and the last thing I ever wanted to do was add to that.

Rebelling as a teenager with Joan around was a tall order too, mainly because if you plonked yourself down on the sofa beside her, aged fourteen and smoked one Marlboro Light after another, she wouldn’t bat an eyelid. Likewise, if you staggered around the house pissed out of your head, her only concern would be whether you’d been at her stash of Chardonnay. Or if you decided you wanted to live off batter burgers and chips day in, day out; again, in Joan-land, not a problem.

With poor Dad out slaving away in the pub where he worked every hour God sent, she was the only authority figure in my life for most of the time. So therefore my teenage rebellion usually involved eating healthily and trying to actually get the odd vitamin into me. While other kids in my class envied that I could get away with never doing homework and watching telly all evening eating McDonald’s if I felt like it, I’d be in the kitchen washing heads of lettuce and juicing carrots.

And here she is now after all these years sitting on a bar stool in my kitchen; OK, maybe not exactly full of friendly chat and warmth – Joan doesn’t do warmth – but she’s an ally and, feck it, she’s here. More than some people.

I make her a coffee using the fancy cappuccino maker for probably the last time (like so much else, it came with the house) and ask her whether she’d like the grand tour. It’s the first time she looks animated since she got here, so off we trot, me still in my pyjamas and dressing gown, her all eager to see the place, inquisitiveness on heels, scanning the place so thoroughly, you’d nearly think she was about to put an offer in on it. In fact, it strikes me that her real reason for coming over was to see where I live, but am I complaining? Hell, no.

So we start with the huge hallway and suddenly I get that sensation of seeing the house through someone else’s eyes. In all my time living here, I don’t think I ever really appreciated how beautiful it really is till now, just when I’m being flung out. Can’t believe I used to give out about all the pink marble floors; looking at them now, they’re just so elegant and classy. And the doric columns gracefully adorning each entrance off the main hall – breathtaking. Dear God, I actually deserve to be thrown out for not giving this fabulous mansion all the love and care it needed.

Joan pulls me out of my reverie. ‘And were there ever any celebrities here?’

I remind myself that she’s come all this way to help me; the woman is doing me a massive favour, so in return, the least I can do is tell her what she wants to hear. Yes, I answer. Loads of them. An actress who’s a household name once snogged a well-known and very married libel lawyer on the exact spot you’re standing on now. And a boy band member snorted a line of coke off the hall table, then was sick into the ivy growing on the steps outside. Then there was the time I went upstairs while a party was in full swing to find a well-known model in flagrantewith a property developer friend of Sam’s, whose wife was at home nursing their four-week-old baby boy.

It’s a good thing these walls can’t talk, because the last days of Sodom and Gomorrah would have nothing on some of the antics that went on here. The house would be packed to the gills with ‘celeb friends’ and ‘well-wishers’ and I’d be right in the middle of them, pouring the entire alcoholic content of my house down people’s throats. I don’t know who exactly I thought I was, the Great Gatsby? Living not just in any house; oh no, only the Elton John of houses would do me. And where are all those so-called friends now?I find myself wondering. Feck knows, but I can tell you this much: not a single one of them has as much as picked up the phone to even see how I am. Not one.

Anyway, Joan drinks it all in, gimlet-eyed, then goes back to wandering around, checking out the décor. ‘Well, I suppose a place like this is all very well and good if it’s the kind of thing you’re into,’ she says coldly, reaching into her handbag and fishing out a box of Dunhill. ‘But if you ask me, it’s all just a bit…sterile. Needs colour. And warmth. Not to mention wallpaper. The lovely polka-dot one I have in my hallway now would work very well here. Festoon blinds would be gorgeous too, give the place a bit of character. And I hope you don’t mind my saying, Jessica, but what in the name of God is that awful smell?’

I explain about the downstairs loo being, let’s just say, out of action, like, forever.

‘And why did you not just ring Dyno-Rod?’