Costas came into the kitchen.

‘What’s got into her?’ I asked. My voice surprised me, it was squeaky.

‘Search me.’

We were silent for a moment, listening to the female voices in the lounge. Women had so much to talk about.

‘Seems a funny thing to do,’ I said.

‘You know Eleni.’

I wasn’t so sure about that. I said: ‘Sorry you had to come all the way out here, in the rush hour.’ We lived in Orpington, in the suburbs. He lived in London.

‘It’s Sunday, mate.’

I had forgotten what day of the week it was. I twitched back my cuff, furtively, to look at my watch. It was 9.20, way past the rush hour. I hoped I wasn’t going mad.

‘You know anything about this?’ I asked.

Costas shook his head. ‘Only this morning.’

Then he rummaged in his pocket, took out his cigarette packet, took two out and lit them. He passed one to me, and it was such a simple thing to do that I burst into tears.

And that was the end of my marriage. It all happened so quickly. Overnight my life changed, as if I had been arrested for a crime I hadn’t known I’d committed. It had a momentum of its own, so fast it took away my breath. Overnight something happened to my house in Croxley Road, it was like Eleni’s face changing, and when I went back I was a visitor. Eleni wore a new blue sweater and it hurt my feelings, not just that she had had the spirits to shop—and to spend my money—but that in it she looked separate. It suited her, too—it was a fluffy thing that clung to her waist—and I realized: One: that I’d be buggered if I complimented her now, and Two: that I hadn’t complimented her enough in the past.

That, she told me, with Maria in attendance, was one of my many shortcomings.

‘Remember when I had my highlights?’ she told Maria. ‘He didn’t notice it for a whole evening and then he said there was something funny about me.’

‘I’d just had three days at the Blackpool Illuminations,’ I said.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

She rolled her eyes at Maria and lit another cigarette. Chain-smoking was the only sign that she was going through a hard time. I had come back for the last of my stuff and I’d had to make my own Nescafé. She must have felt it was easier, not to be friendly.

‘He was never interested in my dancing,’ she turned to Maria. ‘Remember when I got on Yorkshire TV? Did he turn up to watch?’

‘I was on that Tulip Tour,’ I said. ‘I had thirty-three senior citizens to look after. I was in blinking Holland.’ I didn’t add that they had cut that bit anyway. When the programme had come on I’d driven her all the way to Bradford, to the only mate I knew who lived in the receiving area. It was a children’s TV story about a ballerina, and we had all sat waiting in this chap’s living room, he’d even invited the neighbours, and we’d waited for the dance routine bit to come on and it never had. The drive home had been awful.