‘Surely you want to know if I’ve slept with Amber? I’d be asking that question.’

For a moment he lets that hang there and she wonders if she is being challenged to confess: I was there, I saw you, I know you’ve fucked her. But I don’t know what it meant, what I saw.

‘The answer is yes, I have,’ says Matthew. And these are the words that seal the deal for Becky. An explanation for the two being together on the kitchen floor. He isn’t trying to lie to her. She feels a flood of relief, a tension easing that she hadn’t fully acknowledged. ‘I’ve cheated on Antonia before. We’ve muddled through. Antonia has also … I’m sorry. Probably you don’t want to hear any of this. A middle-aged couple’s assorted indiscretions. But I want to be straight with you.’

‘Matthew, you don’t owe me, you know, I hope you don’t …’

‘We’ve always kept it between us. But now … I mean, what do I say? Do I tell the press: No, not true, never been alone with Amber? That fiction would crumble quickly and then I’d look like a liar. I would be proven a liar. But if the alternative is telling them, Yes, we’ve fucked but it was consensual? Then I ruin my family. I have to ask myself, who do I owe the truth to? To my wife I owe the ability to hold her head up in front of our friends. I owe my children their family. I owe Amber … less than any one of those people. I didn’t owe her that part either. And I owe the press nothing at all, though they don’t like settling for that. And then I suppose I have to ask myself, what do I owe you, Becky?’

This time she assumes that the question is rhetorical and that she can afford to sit in silence and wait to be given his answer. But instead he sits back, and she realizes that he may, after all, be waiting for her.

‘You’ve supported my whole career,’ she tells him. ‘You don’t owe me anything. It’s me who owes you.’

Matthew’s eyes fill with tears. He takes Becky’s hand. ‘Thank you. I know how it costs friends to weather this kind of thing together. But you don’t forget the ones who stick by you. I promise you that. You walk over glass for those friends, for the rest of your life. Believe me.’

It is the first time he has ever referred to her as his friend.