When she hears footsteps on the stairs, she knows it’s Greg and that he’s angry. His face, when it appears around the bedroom door, is flushed and bewildered.

‘What is wrong with you?’ he asks, sounding angry rather than concerned, and she turns her face away and opens her mouth, crying into the wall.

‘Jesus Christ, Hilary. What is this? What’s the matter?’

He’s come around the bed and is hunkering down on the floor beside her. She’s still crying soundlessly. He takes her hand – she can feel the panic in him, uncertain of what to do.

‘Did something happen?’

She shakes her head, unable to speak. How to tell him that it’s over – her life as she’d seen it is over. And in such a way! Now that she’s broken down, it’s started to come at her: a cascade of memories, the letters she’d written, the past she had constructed, the future she had hoped for. She sees now, with horrifying clarity, how Anton is right: how the great love of her life was a fantasy, a cheap romance that she’d magnified to become a grand affair. She’d thought she was special to him, that she was the one. Christ, she thought he’d killed for her! When all the time she was just one of a string of women, a blip in his consciousness – a casual fuck, as he had called it. Her humiliation is devastating.

‘Is this about Anton?’ Greg asks, and her eyes slide to his.

He lets go of her hand, confusion clearing, replaced by coldness.

‘You went over there, didn’t you? Maria said …’ He is shaking his head, his jaw clenching, anger quickening inside him, and then he leans forward so that his face is close to hers and hisses: ‘Why the fuck can’t you stay away from that man? I mean, today? You had to go and see him today? Even though we were having guests over to celebrate my book, Hilary. My book! Doesn’t that mean anything to you? Does he always have to take precedence?’

‘I know, and I’m sorry. I can’t help it.’

Back on his feet, he moves away from her. He walks towards the door. She thinks he’s going to leave, but then he turns and comes back to her, his face blotched with anger.

‘Do you think it’s been easy for me all these years? Watching you with your ridiculous daydreams, your foolish hopes? Your letters and your little prison visits? Oh, yes, I knew all about it. I didn’t say anything because I knew it wouldn’t last. And then when you stopped going to see him, I thought, There! You see? She’s over it. She’ll return to me now. But still you held back from me, Hilary. Always keeping me at arm’s length.’