‘I’d met you at Millie’s, and I’d already had lunch with your husband. It didn’t sit well. I don’t date married men. I shouldn’t have met Michael, but my confidence had been at an all-time low. Luckily he wasn’t my type. And I badly needed that lunch with you. Badly needed the things you were promising. My business was hanging on by a thread. You said you wanted a new kitchen. And that you might get me published, that you could talk to people. I knew what that would do for me. But still … I didn’t like myself much at the time. For meeting you. But I felt I was being manipulated at every turn. By Lars …’ she made an ironic face. ‘By you, as it turned out.’

I looked down at my hands, ashamed. ‘Yes. I was manipulating you. And I know that feeling. It’s horrible.’

She shrugged. ‘You were in your own little world of shitty despair, and I was in mine. We were both trying to muddle through. Find a way. But I’d decided, before I met you, that I needed a mask, a protective layer. I played it deliberately cool. Tough. You can see I had my reasons.’

‘Yes. You did.’

A silence prevailed. I wanted to ask her how things were now, if her business was still precarious. If she’d made any decisions with regard to her marriage. If she was going to stay with Lars for the sake of the house. But I knew it was far too complicated. Life was. It was never black and white. It was grey, smudged and messy. As Tolstoy reminds us, every happy family is alike, but every unhappy one is unhappy in its own way. I wouldn’t ask her about it. Wouldn’t ask whether he was still with the young girl, or if it had played out. If that was what she was banking on. Sitting on her hands and waiting, as I had done that night. For something to give. I was sure she wouldn’t want to talk about it. None of us did. We were veterans of different wars and we didn’t choose to parade our scars.

I drank my tea in silence. She seemed to have forgotten about the gym. About me, even. She was looking past me again, deep in thought. I noticed the kitchen wasn’t as pristine as I’d thought. There were pictures of her daughter on the fridge, fixed there with amusing magnets. And a pile of library books on the side, her card on the top, which surprised me. Very few people went to the library these days. I could tell I’d misjudged her. She was just battling on, like so many of us. She just did it in a different way. Under a different guise.