I could have hit him. ‘What else do I have to say to you?’ I said wearily. ‘Yes. It’s your child.’

As we finished our meal in silence, I reflected over fruit tart and coffee that I would never have believed it possible to be married and to feel so utterly lonely.

The next Sunday when I went to visit Olivia it already felt like winter. The sun barely seemed to rise and mist hung thick over the fields, merging with the grey clouds. The train moved like a needle of light through this shadowy landscape, windows running with damp, the lights still on in the compartments even at midday.

My thoughts that morning were no less sombre than the view outside. When Douglas and I had returned home after our meal he made love to me with cold self-absorption. He was no longer apologetic about his inadequacies in bed. He just took what he wanted. I had to get used to preparing myself the way he wanted me; ready for him, on my back. He liked to test himself, leave it until the last moment. He knelt between my legs playing with my breasts like someone tuning a wireless, touching me until he was fully aroused (I wasn’t to touch him), then came into me hurriedly.

I watched him that night. His heavy body lay along mine, the lion-coloured hair in childlike disarray. For a long time he didn’t look into my face. I felt I might just as well not have been there. But suddenly he glanced up and saw me watching him. I don’t know whether he expected my eyes to be closed. I was just lying there, looking. He brought his hand up and slapped me across the face, hard, so that I cried out, the tears stinging my eyes. Then he took his pleasure. Though his orgasm was soon over it affected him like an acute pain, his body convulsing, face puckered. He lay still, recovering. Afterwards he needed comfort. Afterwards, so did I.

During that week he had also announced from behind his newspaper, ‘I’m looking for a house to rent. Somewhere we can have more privacy.’

‘I don’t understand you,’ I said. ‘One minute you say we’re going to London, and the next you want a new house here.’

He lowered the paper and looked coldly at me. ‘Why do you have to question everything I decide? I think it’s time we moved away from your mother and got a place of our own. She can take in lodgers if she needs to and listen in on their conversations instead.’

‘She doesn’t.’ I felt unsually defensive of her. In her way she had been good to us. Though I wasn’t quite sure that she didn’t sometimes stand on the stairs trying to hear what we were saying. ‘Anyway, she’s hardly here now she’s working again.’

But Douglas wasn’t going to put up with me disagreeing. ‘There are a couple of houses I’ve seen up for rent in Kings Heath and it’s no good waiting around. I’m going to see them today.’