‘I just want you to know,’ she says quietly, ‘that despite what you’ve said, I still trust in what we had.’

She is exhausting.

‘Please. Just go,’ he tells her.

Relief sweeps over him when he hears the front door bang shut.

In the silence that follows, he leans back into the armchair, feels the weight of his limbs, the heaviness in his chest. The house whispers around him, the air unsettled in the wake of Hilary’s manic presence. She has stirred something to life, and he closes his eyes, thinks back.

His affair with Janice was coming to an end when Charlotte found tenants for the flat.

‘A short lease,’ she’d told him, over the children’s heads at dinner, ‘three or four months. Just until the work on their house is complete.’

A young couple who’d bought the house across the street, teachers, she told him, with an air of forbearance. He’d spied them in the garden, the day they came to view the flat, Charlotte turning on the charm as she showed them around: the husband with his pudgy features and serious expression looked every bit the geography teacher; the wife was small and animated, a mousy little thing, who tittered at Charlotte’s jokes, eager to please. He watched for a minute, then turned away, instantly forgetting them. He was, at that time, consumed by other things – he’d hit a road-bump with one of his bigger investments, and Janice had become tearful and needy, the whole thing tiresome as they played out its bitter ending.

He gave no further thought to the young couple who were taking the flat, until one Thursday evening, he came through the front door from work, dread lodged in his chest, and heard voices in the living room.

‘Ah, here he is!’ Charlotte said, as he came into the room. ‘The man of the house.’

Her tone was falsely bright, as was the mobile smile on her face.

‘Come and meet Greg and Hilary,’ she cried gaily, putting a gin-and-tonic into his hand without meeting his eye.

In the early hours of that morning, Janice had telephoned their house. Drunk and tearful, she had spoken to Charlotte. The scene that erupted was awful. So while Anton observed his wife perform the role of charming and animated hostess, he knew it was just that: a performance, in front of an unwitting audience. There was a dangerous edge to her laughter and he watched her carefully.

When she put her hand on that poor fool’s thigh, Anton didn’t react. Even when he read the young man’s discomfort, his little wife squirming with unvoiced outrage on the opposite armchair, still Anton remained calm and quiet, not rising to the challenge. Charlotte wanted a scene but he would not give it to her.