It all seems long ago, like another age, another person, and sometimes I forget that that life was ever mine. It’s blurred and gone. Like a few swipes of paint on the canvas from eighteen to twenty two and a half - streaks swilling into each other with light and dark. Vivid brightness and unimaginable dark. White-spotted with aspirin, glowing brandyamber in a glass. Smoke-blown, bruised, dressed in black lace and leather. Like a film I once watched, and felt and heard. The smell has gone. Is mostly forgotten.

So I didn’t recognise the familiarity of the girl straight away. Walking into the shop down the road where I was buying red wine for a night in, the children tucked up in their beds, smooth as china angels. Merlot or Valpolicella? The girl strutted by on high heels and distracted me. With confidence and sophistication. With something else which took me a moment to identify. Past the wine to beer. She could walk on the heels - she didn’t wobble. But it looked as though it had been an effort to learn. She had to still the ankles, force them into acquiescence by squeezing her toes together, gripping the front of the calves. Gritting the teeth. As she smiled behind lipstick.

She was tall, though not as tall as me - even in heels. Her skirt was straight and short, her legs long and lovely. Her hair loose and dark and hanging down around in shining mahogany lengths. She held her shoulders back as she chose cans of Stella, peanuts, moved along for white wine from the fridge. Two bottles. For her. Six cans and a bottle of brandy from behind the counter. For him. An alcoholic dinner for two. She held her head up high and smiled at the woman behind the till. Smiled her into not daring to notice what she had in her basket. How much. Into not noticing the man waiting for her by the door. Watching as she paid by credit card for the meal she didn’t need to cook.

If I hadn’t recognised her I would have been impressed. Smart career girl getting in the booze for a party. Friends round after work. Three or four, maybe more if some of them were driving. A birthday or a promotion. I wouldn’t have guessed the truth of it. Wouldn’t have noticed how she was aware. Of him watching. Of me watching. Of everyone else in the shop not watching. Of the movement of her hips - sexy in scraps black lace. For him, for me, for anyone that looked. The thong cutting between her buttocks, the knub of its beginning rubbing softly on her clitoris. Sexy for him. Sex for her later. After dinner, when he would take the lace between his teeth and pull so that the thong cut deeper, burning into her genitalia. Pleasure lost in pain until it snapped. And then she would melt in wonder that he loved her like this. That his lust was so strong for her that it could not be controlled.

But somewhere buried inside was a little girl who she’d been not long ago. Who ran around with bare feet and twigs tousled in her hair. With dirty knees and holes in the elbows of her jumper. I could see her in her eyes. Looking out through the layers of confidence from the prison where she had been locked away. I could see the bars. They stretched across the shop from her to him. From the Visa stripes of the credit card to the designer stubble. From the Wonderbra cleavage nestling in the fork of her shirt front to the shine of his black leather jacket. The red and white glamour of the Marlboro packet she bought to the silver zippo in the palm of his hand. Warm, heavy, metal. They are bars not easily broken. I know.

I know how difficult it is to learn that the child and the adult can co-exist. Especially in the face of opposition. I watched her leave, tap tap tapping on her high heels. I wondered how long it would take her to learn, or if she ever would. One of them might be killed first. The child or the adult. And that way madness lies. Or murder.

Outside she ripped the cellophane from the Marlboro packet, pushed up the little cardboard lid and removed the silver foil cover with a sharp tug. Twenty cigarettes filling up the whole box. Round circles of white, snug together like the scrolls in a promise box. She removed one for him, one for herself, using only her long nails, and put them between their lips. Between his lips, between hers. He flicked the Zippo into life, and together they put the ends of their Marlboros into the flame. The hot orange part of the flame above the blue. Heads bent together. Cigarettes touching. The child inside of her looked back at me as they walked away.

It’s the fear of what will be left which keeps you there. Keeps you immersed in the colours, rolling through the paint streaks. Dark and light, beautiful and ugly. White-dotted with aspirin. Brandyamber. Sodden soaked in urine and vomit. Sparked with passion.

If you strip it all away what will be left but white? Numb, unremitting, aspirin white where the dots have joined and taken all the pain away. All the love of living. All hope for the future. Paint-stripping away all that you are and the life which you live.

So you stay.