On her way to meet me, Paloma Faith receives a text message from her therapist. “Are you going to be OK today?” he asks her, concerned. Faith is relaying this snippet of her morning to me at the same time as she is patting away tears in her eyes with the corner of a white napkin. The answer, then, is no, not really. “God, I’ve never cried in an interview across my whole career,” the actor and musician laughs, blinking up from beneath her signature blonde bangs. This interview is not like others, though. It’s the first she has given since she split from her partner of 10 years – the first since she became a single mum.
Single mum: it’s a label her own mother wore but one she is still getting used to using herself. “I am a woman in my forties with two children, who is not with their dad any more.” Faith, who is 42, declares this statement slowly and carefully, as if she is sounding out the words for the billionth time but still finding them strange and foreign on her tongue. “I’m very much in the thick of adjusting to that fact. It takes a long time to recover because it’s not like when you’re young, you can’t cut your ties and run.” Her usual heartbreak remedies – “hop on a plane and do something erratic” – are out the window. “I’d need to arrange babysitting,” Faith laughs. But in all seriousness, her kids are the priority. On her middle finger is a chunky gold ring made up of three letters: M-U-M. “There’s very little time left for me, really. I don’t do much. I don’t allow myself much time for enjoyment.”
