Ellen — she is tall and rangy, full of energy, full of information, full of good humour and barbed opinions. She makes me laugh and she doesn’t give a monkey’s fart what I look like. She makes me indifferent to my appearance when I’m with her. Perhaps we should have been lovers, partners, but the idea is laughable. It’s never been an option, because after a couple of weeks together we have grated each other so raw that our parting is a relief. Between us there’s so much unsaid, so much untouched, that the conversations about the Arthurian legend, the Algonquin Circle, the premium growing conditions for tarragon, wear thin enough to reveal the skeletal hinterland of our lives; their bleached bones, picked clean of carrion, are exposed. That is what is personal. Not religious or political beliefs, nor love and its loss, nor the travails of companionship. What is left is absence. The absence of our husbands, the absence of her breast, of my beauty, of her child, of my Merboy. So many things have disappeared that were once there. We don’t often talk about the things that aren’t there. We don’t often talk about absences. But this weekend we did just that.

We’d tramped the entire Cotswolds on Saturday, or so it seemed to me. It was probably a four-, maybe five-mile walk around Chipping Camden, punctuated by coffee and a brandy in a dark, firelit pub. We were lying on settees, reading, in what it pleases Ellen to call ‘the music room’ although it has neither, being the smallest room in the house and having no instruments or sound system.

‘Ellen,’ I said, ‘I think John’s in trouble.’

She took off her glasses and folded them carefully, slipped them into a case. Sat up and looked at me. ‘Why?’

‘Because he’s not talking. I know he finds it hard to talk but it’s a sign when it drops off the scale.’

‘What does he say when he does talk?’

‘Nothing. He talks about nothing.’

‘What do you think is the problem?’

‘Sonja. I don’t think it’s going well. I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t apologise. Do you want another drink?’

I knew that this was Ellen’s way of saying that I could talk, get drunk if I needed to; even get personal if necessary.

She went to the cabinet in the library and brought both of us a drink and then she put a half-botde of J&B next to my glass. I smiled at her and vowed to myself that I would take only a couple of inches from the bottle.

‘So,’ Ellen said, ‘you think John’s in trouble.’

‘Yes. He came to visit me a couple of weeks ago and, I don’t know — his eyes were different. They were clouded or something. Shifty. And every time I asked him about Sonja he hunched. I know he hunches a lot. But this was different. And then I drove up to see him on spec last week and I went to the deli. He was parked outside, just staring at her. He looked murderous, mad. Barking mad. I knew if I went up to him he’d just ignore me. It was like he couldn’t see anyone but her. Something’s going on. What should I do?’ I twisted on the settee and looked at her.