I’m Molly. Molly Alice Brooke on school registers. If you’re a friend of mine, or someone in my family maybe, then I’m Moll too. If you’re an adult in my family, which right now is complicated, then I’m love, or Molly-love, or Curly-Mop, or Sweetheart. At my old school I was Molly-Mop. At Christmas I was an Angel and a Hotelkeeper.

 

Names are important. Everyone has one, except really tiny babies maybe, or stray dogs, or people who’ve forgotten who they are. And even stray dogs and people with amnesia have names. They’ve just forgotten them.

 

And then there’s my man. He didn’t have any name at all.