Home alone, the days felt ripe to fill, but then reality returned | Eva Wiseman

For the first time in years, I have a week by myself. I can have an affair, write a great novel, eat all the best biscuits

My family had gone on holiday, leaving me alone, and I was making a list. Of things to do now that I had the space and the time. Things to achieve. Pleasures to savour. Even the act of making the list felt luxurious. A sharp pen, a clean page, good posture, Mini Magnum, right. It was difficult, though, to know where to start. This was the first time in nine years that I'd had more than a night or two by myself, without the cluttered emotions and rigid routines of young children, school days, pasta, questions, the brushing of hundreds of tiny little teeth. I intended to use it not just wisely but fabulously.

Before they left I briefly sketched out a rough schedule for a potential affair: if I met an interesting stranger on the Monday, say, bonded over a good joke with them on Tuesday, ensured our politics, tastes, anxieties and peccadilloes aligned on Wednesday, took some time for self-care and personal growth, essential for any relationship, on the Thursday, met their parents on Friday, performed enlightening sexual adventures on Saturday, then said a chaste ceremonial goodbye forever on the Sunday, I could conceivably join my partner and kids in France having got it all out of my system by Monday, 11.30, 12ish? On reflection though, the admin seemed quite overwhelming, and wouldn't I prefer, in fact, to walk lazily around the house and enjoy the velvet interior of my own mind?