Arthur, the king prawn, rushed by me and up the garden path laden down with bags. He was stronger than he looked.

The car boot slammed and I spun round. Barbara was fidgeting with her car keys and shifting from one Louis Vuitton flip-flopped foot to the other. It was only then that I noticed she had cotton wool between her toes. She looked at me, awkwardly, in a heavy silence while she figured out how to tell me she was leaving me.

‘I didn’t realise you had a pedicure done too,’ I said to fill the silence.

‘Yes.’ She looked down and wriggled her toes as if to confirm it. Jewels glistened from her big toes. And then she added, ‘Danielle’s invited us to a drinks party on her yacht tomorrow evening.’

Most people would think those two sentences were unrelated, but I understood. You can’t wear shoes on Danielle’s yacht, therefore competition of the jewels and white tips would be fierce. Those women would find ways to accessorise their patellas if they were the only parts showing.

We stared at each other in silence. She was dying to go. I wanted to go with her. I too wanted to be shoeless on the Mediteranean coast while Danielle floated around the guests holding a martini glass daintily between her squared French tips, a plunging Cavalli dress revealing tits as pert as the pimento-stuffed olive floating in her glass, and on her head a tilted sea captain’s hat, making her look like Captain Birdseye in drag. I wanted to be a part of that.

‘You’ll be all right here, sweetheart,’ she said, and I sensed sincerity. ‘With family.’

I looked back uncertainly at the ‘Hansel and Gretel’ house and wanted to cry again.

‘Oh, sweetheart,’ she said, sensing this, and came at me again with her arms held out. She was really good at hugging, she obviously felt comfortable with it. That, or her implants suitably assisted in cushioning my head. I squeezed her tightly again and closed my eyes, but she let go a little sooner than I wanted and I was plunged back into reality.

‘Okay,’ she inched her way towards the car and placed her hand on the door handle. ‘I don’t want to disturb them inside so please tell them-’

‘Come in, come in,’ Rosaleen’s voice sang out from the blackness of the hallway, stopping Barbara from climbing up into her jeep. ‘Hello, there,’ Rosaleen appeared at the door. ‘Won’t you come in for a cup of tea? I’m sorry I don’t know your name, Jennifer didn’t say.’

She’d have to get used to that. There was a lot Jennifer wasn’t going to say.

‘Barbara,’ Barbara replied, and I noticed her grip tightening on the door handle.

‘Barbara,’ Rosaleen’s green eyes glowed like a cat’s. ‘A cup of tea before you hit the road, Barbara? There’s some fresh scones and home-made strawberry jam there too.’

Barbara’s face was frozen in a smile as she thought hard for an excuse.

‘She can’t come in,’ I responded for her. Barbara looked at me, gratefully, and then guiltily.

‘Oh…’ Rosaleen’s face fell, as though I’d ruined her tea party.

‘She has to go home and wash her fake tan off,’ I added. I told you, I’m a horrible, horrible person, and in my eyes, even though I was none of Barbara’s business and she had a life of her own, which she needed to get back to, she was still leaving me behind. ‘And her toes are still wet.’ I shrugged.

‘Oh.’ Rosaleen looked confused as though I’d spoken some odd Celtic Tiger language. ‘Coffee then?’

I burst out laughing and Rosaleen looked hurt. I heard Barbara flip-flopping behind me and she passed by without looking at me. I’d made it easier for her to leave. Next to Rosaleen, Barbara-even in her velour tracksuit, flip-flops and dirty fake-tanned neck-looked like some sort of exotic goddess. And then she was sucked inside the house, like a Venus flytrap catching a butterfly.

Despite Rosaleen gazing at me hopefully, I still couldn’t bring myself to go inside.

‘I’m going to have a look around,’ I said.

She seemed disappointed, as though I’d denied her something precious. I waited for her to go back into the house, to disappear into the blackness of the hallway, which was like another dimension, but she didn’t move. She stood at the porch, watching me and I realised I’d have to move first. With her eyes searing into me, I looked around. Which way to go? To my left was the house, behind me was the open gate leading to the main road, in front of me trees and to my right a small pathway that led into the darkness of the trees. I started walking down the main road. I didn’t turn round, not once, I didn’t want to know if she was still there. But the further I walked it wasn’t just Rosaleen that I felt was watching me. I felt revealed, as though beyond the majestic trees somebody else was watching. Just that feeling you get when you intrude on nature’s world, that you’re not supposed to be here, not without an invitation. The trees that lined the road all turned their heads to watch me.

If men dressed in armour had come galloping towards me on horseback and waving swords, they wouldn’t have seemed out of place. The estate was steeped in history, crowded with ghosts of the past, and now here I was, just another person ready to begin my story. The trees had seen it all, yet still I held their interest, and as the light summer breeze blew, leaves swished to one another making the sounds of gossiping lips, never growing bored of another generation’s journey.

I followed the main road and finally the trees, which were cleverly landscaped to conceal the castle, fell away. Even though it was me that was moving towards it, the castle felt suddenly upon me, as though it had sneaked towards me without my even noticing, a whole pile of sneaky stone and mortar on its tiptoes with a finger across its lips, as if it hadn’t had a bit of fun for the past few hundred years. I stopped walking when it came in sight. Little me before big castle. It felt to me to be more domineering, more commanding as a ruin than as a castle because there it stood before me with its scars revealed, all wounded and bloody from battle. And I stood before it, feeling a shadow of who I used to be, with my scars revealed. We instantly bonded.

We studied one another and then I walked towards it, and it didn’t blink once.

Though I could have walked into the castle through the gaping hole in the side wall, I felt it would be more respectful to enter through the other bite life had taken out of it, which used to be the front entrance. Respectful to whom, I don’t exactly know, but I think I was trying to appeal to the softer side of the castle. I paused at the door, a respectful pause, and then went inside. There was a lot of green, a lot of rubble. It was eerily quiet within the walls, and I felt as though I was intruding on somebody’s house. The weeds, the dandelions, the nettles, all stopped what they were doing to look up. I don’t know why, but I started crying.

Just as I’d felt sad for the bluebottle, I felt sad for the castle, but realistically, I think I felt those things because I was mostly sad for myself. I felt like I could hear the castle moan and whine as it was left to stand here, falling apart, while the trees around it continued to grow. I moved over to one of the walls, the stones rough and so large I could imagine the strength of the hands that had carried, or which had been forced to carry, them. I hunkered down in the corner, pressed my ear against the stone and closed my eyes. I don’t know what I was listening for, I don’t really know what I was doing, trying to comfort a wall, but it’s what I did anyway.

If I’d told Zoey and Laura what I’d done they’d have carted me off to the fashion house of bumless smocks for sure, but I felt like I’d connected to the building in some way. I don’t know, maybe because I’d lost my home and I felt that I had nothing that was truly mine, coming across this building that wasn’t anybody’s, I wanted to make it mine. Or maybe it was just that when people are lonely they cling to anything not to feel that way any more. For me, that anything was the castle.