This morning I drive to a small town 12 miles outside Exeter to meet with a new accountant. I take the wrong road, get hopelessly lost and pull into Lidl's car park to ring her. Can't find her number, call a friend who knows her. I write it down wrongly. Call him back. Thank goodness for mobile phones. She gives me new directions. I miss the turn, drive the wrong way down a one-way street. I'm very late but she is lovely and bright and helpful. We sit on her squashy sofa. Her cat crawls onto my lap and purrs while I stroke him and try and explain the convolutions of our accounts. It turns out she can't do anything this time but will help with next year's tax return.
I drive home - on the right road - with white pussy cat hairs stuck on my jeans and adrenaline still racing round my heart.
At home I start making Saturday's supper for when my big sister comes to stay. I cook up an autumn couldron of tomato sauce using squashy yellow and ripe red tomatoes on offer in the market this morning for £1 a kilo. I add fried peppers and cubes of deep orange Haikido squash which pulp down into rich bronzy gold stew, the colour of these New England maple leaves.
While the sauce is bubbling away I roast the aubergines - a new variety - narrow bendy logs the colour of the pale mauve circles below my eyes. All those night hours awake, fretting uselessly - shadow bruises painted on my face - hard to conceal now.
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