There was no place better than home for Ella Risbridger, until her parents sold the house she grew up in.

You know that feeling, when it’s dark and wet, and you’re hurrying home? And you turn the corner, and slide your key into the lock, and it’s light and warm and safe? That’s the feeling I want. I’ve been looking for it a long time. When I was a kid, I used to take the bus home. My little sisters were already back, gently bickering over Barbies. We had an ancient red Rayburn range to heat the whole house: always bread-dough rising on the back of it; socks drying on the rack above it; and an orphan lamb, safe in a box of straw, tucked down in the open warming oven to revive it. My mum would be making a pot of tea with one hand and a pot of pasta with the other. A sleeping dog on the sofa. Curtains drawn against the dark, and the lamps lit. That kitchen was the safest place in the whole world. And then my parents sold up, and moved away.

I didn’t visit. Their new house was 4,000 miles away. We saw each other in hotels, and I started looking for another home. I tried a castle attic; a Parisian toolshed; the spare room of a friendly butcher. I thought I’d found home in a tiny, two-room flat in London: no new-born lambs, but a boyfriend whom I adored. The flat was always full of people, the windows steamed up from cooking and laughter. I looked round one autumn evening carrying a huge dish of fragrant, garlicky curry and I saw all the people I loved best in the whole city sprawled on the sofa playing Monopoly and thought: ‘This is it. This is home.

But then my boyfriend got sick. And then he got sicker. And then he needed to stay in hospital, and then a different hospital in a different city. It didn’t seem worth putting the heating on for one. It didn’t seem worth cooking for only me. I was cold a lot, and I ate ready meals that tasted like cheap ketchup. One evening I found myself wailing, desperately, “But I just want to go home,” on my cold kitchen floor. And then the phone rang. My mother said, from 4,000 miles away, “Come home,” and so, finally, I did. It had been six years. And although the house was different, and the country was different, and the air was warm and spicy instead of cold and sleety, it was the same. My mother made a pot of tea and the pasta was almost done. My sisters, past the Barbie stage, were comparing Snapchats. A dog slept on the sofa. My boyfriend called from his hospital, and said, “Are you home yet?” And I looked around, and thought: ‘yes’.

Rage, lust, power and warmth: how it feels to experience ‘red’ emotions