My oldest friends come over for a Christmas meal, and things tumble in that December way so that it becomes only the men who can make it. At one point, they sit around the table with my husband and cheers each other, while I’m standing at the other end of the kitchen, preparing our food. I say, Are you fucking kidding me? and we all laugh, but I feel for a moment like I’ve slipped into some kind of parallel dimension, or a time warp to twenty years ago where I wouldn’t have said anything because I love them all so much. 

I go to bed so early the next night that every time I wake up and realise it’s still dark, I tumble back through the blissful blackness like I’m falling with no danger of impending impact. I feel human in the morning, so much so that I go to see Star Wars again, taking the eldest, and cry so hard at the final forest scene that I frighten the two teenage boys next to us. I realise at the climax that this film is exactly what I needed in a month of constant, expected, unnoticed emotional and physical labour, and I squeeze my daughter in the dark of the cinema, and feel such joy that she can see a world where the heroes look like black men and young women.