Janet Christie: I adopt my Sigourney Weaver in Alien persona

I’m in the mothership, or Nostromo, as I like to call it as I adopt my Sigourney Weaver in Alien persona to gut the boys’ rooms. I’m five hours in and the sun is blazing outside. A long, cool vodka awaits, but not yet.

Seventeen crusty single socks, umpteen screws, coins too low in denomination to warrant picking up, matter up the walls – Marmite, blood, paint, snotter, who knows? I scrub on, filling two bin bags with bottles, wrappers, oose and glaur.

Around me there are rap lyrics, undelivered teachers’ letters, gadgety things, more than enough 
unused condoms thank you very much, and touching mementos like birthday cards from hated siblings, a tiny welly, a teddy. There’s evidence of Youngest Child’s visits: her felt pen tray, ‘I hate you’ notes …

Then I start finding my stuff. Several lighters, books – Angela Davis’ Women Race and Class, The Female Eunuch ­– a Montecristo cigar, half smoked, my ancient Be-Ro recipe book…

Propelled by fury I stomp around, my foot kicking over a sawn-off Irn-Bru bottle that vomits brown liquid. There’s something in it, alive, with tentacles, like the thing that burst from John Hurt’s chest. It scuttles under the bed. Slamming the door, I bolt outside and lie on a trampoline, shaking. Can I ever return to the mothership?