I mention to Jenny that there’s quite a few out-of-season cooking apples going rotten in the wicker bowl on the kitchen table and perhaps she might do something with them. Anything at all. I’m quite partial to a bit of apple tart but she knows this so I feel disinclined to actually suggest rustling up something so obvious. I pick up a large apple at random and I check it for patches of wrinkled skin and for any other kind of blemishing – bruising or a sneaky infiltration of insects. I take a tea towel that is hanging from the handle on the oven and I polish the skin and I try not to press down too deeply on the fruit in case I hurt it because the way I’m at odds with myself today I imagine that apples have feelings.

There are more apples rotting prematurely in the house. I come across a plastic bag under the stairs with the Tesco logo and the shit about how every little helps and in this bag are a whole load of unripe, bitter apples given to us by some generous spirit in Jenny’s art group. And despite the fact that they have been picked too early, the smell is so delightfully pungent that I put my entire head into the bag even though I have always warned the children to never ever put their heads anywhere near a plastic bag. I leave my head in the bag for a couple of seconds but it feels more like a few minutes, allowing the cider aroma to build into my nostrils. My cheeks begin to feel hot – like they are covered in a blush of sweat, and even though it’s a bit early in the season for apples, there’s something about wasting food that is unforgivable.

A certain part of me is sad that Jenny won’t be able to showcase her work. She obviously has talent and that’s the pity of it all but when you’re slicing through drawings that your wife has spent hours over you don’t see the consequences. All you are capable of seeing is Jerome Fagan laughing at you because you’re at home playing dad while your wife of many years, your beautiful wife, is out with him, filling him in on her artistic endeavour.