‘Honestly, he drove me round the bend,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I felt like screaming. I used to go into the bathroom for a good bellow.’

So that was what she did in there, It always smelt of bubble bath but I was probably insensitive. There had been no point to any of it—the grouting, the varnishing, the time I had held her head all night when she had been eating mussels. I felt terrifically sleepy—more tired than I had ever been in my life. But I couldn’t just lay down on the settee; it wasn’t my home any more. She would tell me how boring I was—correction, she would tell Maria, who had already heard how I slept through TV, and snored in bed, and had once actually fallen asleep while … well, it was only the once and nobody should have heard that, not even a sister. I’d had glandular fever and I’d been plastering the lounge all day, and couldn’t even a husband be human, once in a while? I’d apologized enough at the time.

They started talking in Greek. She said something like aglocas and pracoras, but I couldn’t understand. Maria replied with a stream of k’s and l’s; they were more vivacious in their own language.

It grew darker. Maria listened, shaking her head in sympathy. This irked me. For six years Eleni had complained about her sister, saying how bossy and disapproving she was. Now, overnight, they had become chums. Maria had temporarily moved in. They were waiting for me to leave, so they could make their supper and talk about me more.

‘He was always halfway up a bloody ladder with his Black and Decker,’ Eleni said, coughing through the smoke.

I was going to reply that I was making a home for her, that I loved doing it and thought she loved it too, but I didn’t. It made me too sad.

I drove back to London. I know I was a wimp, letting myself be pushed out of the house like that. But if I got angry she might phone a lawyer, she was so hysterical, and then it would all be official and have to happen. If I laid low it might blow over. After all, she had been hysterical before, though in the early days I had called it fiery and admired her for it. Once she had bought a new dress, and when she had asked my opinion I had said it was quite nice. I hadn’t been concentrating. So first she hit me and then she took the dress into the garden and burnt it. It was made of some nylon stuff because it shrivelled and smelt strange.

I hadn’t known what to do with her. Men seemed simpler than women. Sometimes—I could admit it now—sometimes it was a relief, going to work in the morning. It was like coming into the fresh air. There they were in the depot, horsing around. ‘Wotcha,’ they’d say, and I’d say ‘wotcha’ back.