‘I’ll ring you later, when I get home,’ I said.

She hung up and I drove on in silence, eyes fixed firmly on the road ahead. Only when we left the motorway did Chico say anything.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Tell you what?’

‘You know perfectly well what. That you and your missus are havin’ troubles.’

I looked across at him. There was no point in denying it.

‘It’s not the sort of thing you advertise.’

‘But I’m your mate.’

I sighed.

‘I think it’s my new hand.’

‘What about it?’

‘She says she can’t stand it. Claims it feels like she’s being touched up by a stranger.’

He laughed. ‘Don’t be so bleedin’ stupid. That can’t be the real reason. It may be what she says but that’s just a smokescreen, an excuse.’

‘Are you actually trying to make me feel worse?’

‘Course not. I’m just tellin’ you the truth.’

Maybe I didn’t want to hear the truth.

‘Perhaps she’s bored with me.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ Chico said. ‘You’re gettin’ unexciting and ponderous in your old age. Where’s the old Sid Halley who would whisk Marina off her feet and give her a good seein’-to in the garden during the afternoons?’

‘We have a daughter, you know.’

‘So? The kid’s at school most of the day. So do it in the mornin’. Get on with it. Or do you want to end up bein’ one of those borin’ old farts in an ill-fittin’ grey cardigan with your trousers pulled up to your tits, more interested in what’s comin’ on the television than the passion you can still generate in the bedroom department?’

‘And who do you think you are?’ I said. ‘Dr Ruth? It’s not as if your love life is anything to write home about. Have you heard from Ingrid, or should I say Ivan?’

‘Fuck off,’ he said.

I wished I could.

Chico and I spent the rest of the journey to Charles’s place at Aynsford in an uneasy silence.

It gave me time to think.

Was I really boring?

I had to accept that maybe I was.

When Marina and I had first met, we had both been living in London. Indeed, I’d had a flat in Belgravia, just a stone’s throw from the gardens of Buckingham Palace, and in that great fun-fair of a city there had always been places to go, new restaurants to try, cinemas and theatres by the score, to say nothing of concerts, museums, river boats on the Thames and a whole host of other things to do, all of them just a few Tube stops away and many within easy walking distance of our bed.