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if I thought about it at all ten years ago it was as some nearly invisible ladder whose bottom rung I couldn’t quite reach despite my best attempts, and I read books and wrote words and hid them away and cooked for myself and you the sweet and savoury and rubbed your shoulders and sewed on buttons and swore and sweated and made love and told myself it didn’t matter as my fingers wrinkled and jowls sagged and hair grew shorter and more sparse and all along the ladder was climbing me

P cherrett