I meant that we had been married for six years and there were so many things we hadn’t got round to yet. I had hardly told her anything about when I was little; there hadn’t been time. On the other hand, she had never asked. On the other hand, too, I didn’t know nearly enough about her. Sitting in the coach that morning, waiting for my passengers to embark, I had listened to Only the lonely. The name Roy Orbison had never been mentioned by either of us. That name; lots of others. Lots of things. Suddenly I felt as if all the bones had been taken out of my body. I sat down.

It’s a funny thing about time. I didn’t know how long I sat there. It was like being in another country and all the clocks were wrong. I heard her, a mile off, still talking on the phone and even the kitchen seemed to have changed shape. It wasn’t the room I had known; the walls were further away. I felt dizzy, and thought it might be a good idea if I went upstairs to sleep. I would pull the duvet over my head and when I woke up the front garden would be back to normal and she would be in the bathroom, having a bath. She liked spending ages in there; I had made it really luxurious.

I nearly moved, to go upstairs. Then I remembered her complaints about my sleeping. ‘He’s such a lump,’ she would say to her girlfriends, nudging me in the ribs. ‘Snoring in front of the telly.’ I had presumed that this was said in the normal, exasperated way that wives talked, but now I would have to remember everything all over again.

Stupid things popped into my head, like how was I going to pick up my dry cleaning when she had the tickets? I needed to know the answers but I didn’t dare ask her in case she started explaining and then it would be real. I stood up to get a can of lager, but then I sat down again. I had no breath in my chest. The phone tinged; she had finished speaking.

I didn’t want her to come in because then she would tell me when she had stopped loving me. Perhaps she would tell me that she had never loved me at all. I wanted a cigarette but my jacket was in the hall, and I would have to pass the lounge door. I stayed dead still, like an animal scenting danger. I felt I was suffocating in a sitting position.

Then I heard the front door and Costas, her brother, was in the hall. He had let himself in without ringing the bell. This was alarming; it must be a crisis. Costas stood in the hallway, looking bulky and embarrassed. Both rooms were too dangerous. He caught my eye, shrugged and spread out his hands. Women, he meant. I nodded. I had always liked Costas. In fact, I liked Eleni’s family more than she did, but now she had called them and they would have to close ranks. Her sister Maria had arrived too. Suddenly I was outnumbered by Greeks.