‘What do you want me to say? I can’t admit to something I didn’t do.’ There was a small arrow-shaped bruise on his forearm. He was always in the wars, Alex; usually alcohol-invoked. ‘It’s probably some nutter that saw you on TV. You shouldn’t smoke, you know, Maggie.’ He turned away again, biting his nail fervently.

‘Yes, well, needs must.’ I lit a cigarette defiantly, the smoke curling between banana plants and sweet-smelling jasmine towards the glass ceiling. It was warm in here, humid even, but the sky above was dead, utterly devoid of any kind of colour.

I stared at the smoke, at Alex’s long, broad back, and realised I simply didn’t know whether to believe him. He’d always had a strained relationship with the truth, and ultimately I’d stopped trusting him some time ago. He’d told one too many stories, and so now…

Piano music drifted suddenly into the room; a familiar haunting melody whose notes wrapped themselves around me and squeezed painfully. Mendelssohn’s Song Without Words. I felt a huge wave of sadness engulf me, infinite misery that this was our reality; that the sum total of my relationship with Alex was being here, now, snarled up in this mess.

‘Turn it off, Alex, please,’ I whispered.

‘What’s wrong with it?’ He turned from the window.

‘For God’s sake.’ I sat clumsily on a bamboo chair. ‘Do you really not remember?’ It felt like someone had just poured concrete into my veins. ‘Did nothing we ever did together, Alex, did nothing ever really matter to you?’

‘Of course it bloody did. But why should I remember it?’ He looked unworried still. ‘You know I’m crap with music.’

I thought miserably of Santana and the Kaiser Chiefs and Led Zeppelin, of all the lost iPods that I’d given him as presents that he then left in taxis and buses (‘I’ll get another one, Mag, and I’ll get you one too this time,’ he’d cajole, and he’d tickle my feet, and I’d sigh and forgive him yet again). I remembered the new stereo we’d bought that he’d kicked to bits one night when he was hideously drunk, during a row about Iraq. Ostensibly about Iraq, anyway. Always believed in things a little too fervently, Alex; always took things too personally when drunk.

I didn’t trust myself to speak now, grinding out my cigarette in an ashtray so ornamental it couldn’t be meant for use.

‘Is it, this music –’ he looked contemplative, ‘is it the one that – when we went down to Pendarlin that first Christmas and –’

‘You’re really cruel sometimes, you know.’ I stood. At the door I turned to gaze at him for a moment, at his familiar craggy face, trying desperately to tune into the Alex I’d first known, the one who hadn’t succumbed to all his demons.