I didn't feel single until I got the train home. It was one of those Fridays when I had spent all day thinking about getting the first goddamn train out of this city and getting straight into bed just as soon as the day would let me, but an admirer convinced me I wanted to go for a drink in a seedy Soho bar, and entertain his ego for some hours. I drank to stem my disappointment at being convinced, but remained sober enough to refute any further advances. Hence I found myself drunk, going home on the late train, hours after I intended to.

Mobile phones were ringing, and being answered by people as drunk as me, but different, because they had people who phoned them to see if they had got the train, to offer them a lift from the station, to take an order for a delivery Chinese. Those who were not phoning their lovers were resting on their shoulders, safe in the knowledge that they would wake in time, and their bag would not be robbed before they were home for the evening. Then I felt single.

Never before had I noticed couples when I was single, always before I had been glad of what I had escaped, not sorry for what I had lost. I have felt empty, I have felt hurt, I have felt unrequited and I have felt angry. Lonely: this was new to me. And determined as I was to avoid joining the hoards of ladies of a certain age, seeking a man, a provider, a daddy, I felt the call, the desperation, the fear, I saw myself growing old alone, and the sadness that enveloped me was like a damp mist that makes your clothing clammy as Scotland, it made me as uncomfortable as somebody else's shoes. It felt like someone else's life.

I still like to dream about what I'm going to be when I grow up. I never wanted children, but I always presumed that I would be alright, that I would be happy. I thought I might be stressed sometimes, I thought I would be poor sometimes, I liked to think I might be rich. But I never considered being lonely. Loneliness hangs over rich and poor alike. I have friends, don't get me wrong, friends with lovers and children and lives that don't include single friends, single types who have forgotten the words to nursery rhymes and can't make formula milk. Friends who have lost their conversation. None of my female friends have time to read books anymore. By the time they have, they'll have forgotten how. I cannot talk about children, they cannot talk about the city. I cannot meet anyone to make it go away, who understands the life I came from and the

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