‘Sure.’ She put the phone down, trembling with fury.

Kate had never openly criticized Richard. They had got on civilly enough, even had things in common. But Anna remembered her once saying, ‘It’s no good. He’ll burn out carrying on the way he does. His work’s very worthwhile, of course, but you have to keep it in perspective.’

Thinking back, Anna saw that Kate had known their relationship was at odds long before she had herself. It wasn’t that she’d said anything. It was more what she hadn’t said: none of those encouraging signals of hope for it to last. When the two of them had moved in together four years ago, Kate had been helpful but not exactly over the moon about it.

‘We’re not thinking of getting married – at the moment anyway,’ Anna had confided, wondering what the reaction would be. ‘To tell you the truth, Richard’s not too sure about marriage – as an institution I mean.’

‘I think you’re very wise,’ Kate said unexpectedly. ‘Being tangled up in buying property together is enough of a complication without rushing into marriage as well.’

She had, back then, fallen for something Richard represented as much as for himself. After she met him, her life before seemed to have been spent in slumber, wasted in some way. She had drifted from college to teaching, unsure what else to do, had barely examined what she believed about anything. And there was Richard, fresh from his degree, embarked as a mature student in sociology and politics. Old as she was, she had been impressed by someone who could bandy terms around as if they owned them: the jargon of sociology. And Richard’s ideals, which he could lay out for her like a pack of cards. But of late she had begun to notice other things: all the friends she had somehow not seen for a long time because Richard had condemned them as bourgeois or just plain boring. Friends she had once valued, who’d seen her through other times, college and teaching. And she had mistaken Richard’s openness about his own feelings for sensitivity to hers.

She decided to face the rest of the house. In their room the duvet lay in a strangled twist across the pine-framed bed. There were underpants and socks and shirts left lying all over the coconut matting (Richard didn’t like carpet).

She sat on the side of the bed holding a photograph in a wooden frame from the dressing table. A close up of her and Richard, both grinning foolishly at the camera. It was taken a few months after they got together. She had her hair even longer then and Richard said she looked like Mary Hopkin. She had been clowning, singing, ‘Those were the days my friend – la la la la la la . . .’ Richard had a cigarette hanging from the side of his mouth, a lazy half smile, arm crooked round Anna’s neck and smoke threading up through her hair. His shirt was a loud check, hair curling down into his neck and chunky sideburns.