Aidan pushes a coffee towards me. My favourite mug is printed with a tiny green handprint on one side and a footprint on the other. Aidan had it made for me on the first Mother’s Day after I had given birth and I had cried when I’d seen it. For a long time, I wouldn’t use it, it felt too precious and I was scared it would break, but as the years passed I needed that physical reminder that these impossibly small hands and feet once belonged to my child. Ever practical, Aidan reassured me that he had a spare so if it did accidentally smash I could have another.

Some things are so easily replaceable, but not everything.

‘So.’ I take a sip of my now lukewarm drink.

‘Lucy…’ There is such weariness in that one word. ‘Can we just… not. Not today.’

‘But we need to talk.’

‘All we do is talk about Kieron and we go around in circles. Words can’t heal him no matter how much we want them to.’

I know that’s true but I believe that words can heal us. The right words anyway, but I fumble to find them, to pluck them out of my mind and form them on my tongue in the correct order. Lately, almost everything I say sounds accusatory or argumentative. I wish I could say what’s in my heart which is, ‘I need you. I love you. I want us to feel like a family again.’

‘Aidan,’ I whisper, hurt pulsing inside of my chest.

His sorrowful hazel eyes meet mine, the eyes I’d looked into when he’d slid the thin gold band onto my finger and promised me forever. Does he regret marrying me? Is forever too long? Too hard? Too much of everything?

Marriage takes work.

My nana had told me this when I’d splayed my fingers and glittered my engagement ring at her. I’d told her not to worry. Aidan and I were so in love I couldn’t envisage a time we wouldn’t be happy. Now I can’t quite remember what happiness feels like. It visits us fleetingly: sharing a Saturday lunchtime pizza with Fergus and Melissa, the four of us playing rummy while we lingered over coffee; me and Aidan curled onto the sofa sharing a bottle of wine. The other night something funny came on the TV and we laughed aloud before we’d both snapped our mouths shut as though we had no right to experience any joy.

I miss him.

I miss us.

‘Can I help?’ Once I wouldn’t have asked, we’d have stood side by side, both knowing instinctively what the other needed.

‘I’ve got everything covered.’ He’s crushing garlic for the potatoes, rosemary sprigs from the garden already washed.

‘What do you think about going back to Center Parcs in October half term? With Mel, Fergus and Ryan?’