But I was learning. I held a party for my summer birthday: I warmed pizza and chilled rosé and turned the patio into a jungly dance floor, going so late that the neighbors behind started yelling. We had Easter Sunday lunch around my dining table, my little brother cooking lamb, my father sneaking around the corner for potted daffodils, my mother quite ill but accepting the dinner spoon by spoon. I held brunch for Melanie and our university girlfriends, warming croissants and brewing coffee while their babies sprawled over the carpet, clutching my wooden spoons in their little fat hands. I made overnighting friends “divorce pasta”: a lemon and Parmesan spaghetti I’d made for myself so many times that I could give my full attention to what they were saying as I cooked. I rolled out my yoga mat in the mornings—it was Melanie, I think, with the wisdom earned from her own single years, who reminded me of what I could do with a yoga mat of my own—and I read on the sofa while dal bubbled on the stove. I cried in the bath, on the sofa, in the garden. I watched formulaic rom-coms. I danced in front of the bathroom mirror when I got back drunk. It wasn’t that I didn’t know how to make a life, I discovered, it just wasn’t easy. I had to be patient, and I had to try new things, and have them fail sometimes. I had to work out what was right for me.