She shook her head miserably, and slunk away to the kitchen to put the kettle on. Returning through the hall with a tray, she noticed a letter had been dropped through the letter box. Having put the tray down in the living room, she went back to the hall to collect it.

‘What’s this?’ David asked as she held it out to him.

‘It must have been delivered by hand,’ she replied, sitting down and pouring out the tea.

David swore suddenly.

‘What is it now?’ she asked, glancing up anxiously.

There always seemed to be some drama unfolding in her husband’s life, and she was sick of it. Having taken early retirement from his firm of solicitors, David had become increasingly crabby sitting around at home. She had advised him not to retire before he was ready, but he had been adamant that he was not going to carry on working now that his office had been invaded by arrogant young know-it-alls. When he had first entered local politics she had been pleased that he would be kept occupied away from the house, leaving her to pick up her life as it had been before her husband was at home all day during the week. On Mondays she resumed her painting class, on Wednesdays she returned to Pilates, and once Daisy was born she helped look after her every Friday. She had welcomed David’s election to the local council where she thought he would be kept happily occupied. But he seemed to be constantly falling out with one council member or another, and his temper had not improved. When he became leader of the council, if anything he had become even more curmudgeonly. But at least he was kept busy.

‘You don’t understand the pressure I’m under to resist these changes,’ he would tell her. ‘You have no idea how difficult they’re making it for me to just get on with the job. It’s becoming impossible.’

But when Anne suggested, hesitantly, that he might resign from his position, he dismissed the notion with an impatient shake of his head.

‘And how do you suppose they would manage without me?’

Anne could have replied that the council would manage perfectly well without her husband just as they had managed before his election, but she wisely refrained from making any such comment. Not only would it have incensed him further, but she dreaded the prospect of his quitting and being at home all the time.

Instead, she had said, ‘All that responsibility must be hard. They are an ungrateful bunch.’

‘Louts,’ he replied. ‘Ignorant louts, the lot of them.’

‘Surely you have a lot of support among them,’ she said. ‘You were elected, after all.’

David scowled and told her she didn’t understand. ‘You never do.’

He stared at the letter he had taken out of the envelope, and Anne noticed that his normally ruddy cheeks had turned pale.