When I came home she told me I had to love her now. When I looked bemused—I’d just driven 450 miles—she opened the empty drawer. She said she’d cut them all up and since then the rubbish men had been. She said: ‘Now you can never love anybody but me.’

And that night she burst into tears because I couldn’t bring myself to touch her. She was right, in a sense, to cry; because after that night I loved her less.

So I sat in the flat, and it felt like this spring getting tighter round my skull. It’s not fair. How could she do it? By she I didn’t just mean Eleni any more; I meant Lesley too, because my old wounds were opened up. They were both women who had done things I couldn’t understand. As I squashed my lager cans into the pedal-bin—why was it never big enough?—I thought: I’ve taught two women to drive. One of them stole my car and the other one stole my son.

One Sunday morning, when I couldn’t stand it any more, I phoned Eleni. It was near the end of October and I’d heard nothing from her for a month. I had been imagining so many things that by now I had simply to hear her voice. Perhaps she’d been mulling it over and had decided to have me back; perhaps Maria had persuaded her that at least I was better than most blokes and kept my mortgage repayments up; perhaps I should take her on holiday to Toronto, which for some reason she had always wanted to see, and everything would be all right. Of course there was always the opposite possibility, that she would say something terrible like hadn’t I got a solicitor yet? But by now it was worth the risk. Since September I had been sitting beside the phone like a teenager, my heart lurching when it rang; but usually it was somebody asking for Lewisham Discount Carpets because there was something wrong with the line.

Anyway, I dialled my own number—it felt strange, that—and it was engaged. A few moments later I tried again and it was still busy. Eleni liked the phone; if she was complaining about me it was bound to go on for ages. I thought for a moment about money, and how though I didn’t have a wife I still had a phone bill, and how unfair it was, that the more she told people how inadequate I was the more I had to pay, and then suddenly I got to my feet, left the flat and took the train to Orpington.

Four

It was a twenty-minute walk from the station to my house. It was starting to drizzle and I was having second thoughts. She had often complained that I wasn’t spontaneous, but perhaps today wasn’t the time to start. Outside the cemetery there was the disabled woman selling flowers, and I thought about buying some. Then I thought bugger me if I’m going to be romantic.