I did a stupid thing, but I needed to do something. I went into the bathroom, unplugged his razor and threw it out of the window, into the shrubbery. It was a puny thing to do, when I felt like chucking his things into the garden, or better still setting fire to the house, but I did it. I didn’t want to do something big, or they would know I had been there. Then I took the bottle of scotch from the cabinet in the lounge, let myself out, and caught the train back to London.

That night I phoned Costas. It turned out that he’d known all the time. The man was the ex-husband of somebody at her dancing class. Why hadn’t anyone told me? I asked. He said it wasn’t his business, it was up to Eleni to tell me in her own time. I put the phone down; I couldn’t argue with him when he was lending me his flat. Once you’re on your own you have to be nice to people, like a visitor. But I realized then that he wasn’t really my mate; at a time like this, despite all their differences, he was still Eleni’s brother.

That night, across the road in the shopping precinct, the man started bellowing again. He hadn’t been there for weeks. His voice rose like a banshee. The phone rang twice, each time a wrong number. Somebody, stifling his mirth, wanted somebody called Leroy.

I sat down and wrote a letter to Eleni, telling her I wanted a divorce. Then I finished the scotch and smoked about fifty cigarettes. How long had she known him, when had she started lying, when was it exactly that she’d started waxing her legs? I thought of my car, and knew I never wanted to sit in it again. I thought of the bedroom. Ridiculously enough, I would almost have preferred strewn bedclothes, ashtrays, the orgy bit. I’d steeled myself for that. But it had looked so contented. How quickly she’d changed; she had never bothered to be tidy for me. And she had never put flowers beside the bed.

The next morning I had an early run to Luton. My head throbbed and my mouth felt full of ashes. An elderly lady gave me a piece of Toblerone but it didn’t do the trick, not at 6.30. My passengers were going to Majorca and I had a sudden urge to dump the coach at the airport and go with them, but then I’d always have to come back again, wouldn’t I, some time or another?

There was only one person amongst them under fifty; she was a big girl, with glasses. As I unloaded the luggage she leant towards me and whispered: ‘Trust me to go and get cystitis.’ Now what did that mean? What were women up to?

The Monday rush hour had started; traffic was thick. I drove down the M1, back towards London, with fifty-three empty seats behind me. I switched on the radio. I thought that my wife’s boyfriend couldn’t have a shave that morning, and how bad behaviour spreads. I thought that somewhere in England my son might be getting ready for school. I wished my parents were still alive. My brains felt as if they were boiling and when I looked at my hands on the wheel they belonged to somebody else. I wondered if I was unhinged and if they would take away my licence. The windscreen wipers slewed to and fro; behind me a lorry flashed its lights. I remembered watching Porridge on TV; the prisoners discussing how some geezer got three years for stealing a car while somebody else only got one year for manslaughter, and Ronnie Barker said no wonder when it takes twenty minutes to make a car and only five minutes to make a person. I tried to work this out and found I was laughing out loud, a high noise that frightened me. I wondered if I should pull onto the hard shoulder for a moment. Perhaps I was ill.