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Loneliness is silent, invisible and as deadly as a smoking habit.

Nothing about Rebecca’s life looks sad. She’s strikingly attractive and professionally successful. I met her in her comfortable split-level flat in Fulham, just after she had started a new job, another rung up the ladder of career and income. Four years ago, when she was 31, a long-term relationship that she had thought would lead to marriage came to a sudden end. She still looks wistfully over her shoulder, but at the same time desperately wants to settle down and have children before it’s too late. “Lots of people can’t understand why I’m lonely,” she says. “I’ve got a good job, a lovely family and lots of close friends. But most of them now are married and taken up with babies. I try to be happy for them, but there’s no one I can ring if I’ve had a bad day; there’s no one for whom I’m the most important one. Things like filling out forms make me feel acutely lonely. Who’s my next of kin? My dad.”