‘How long for?’ I asked, maybe not wanting to hear the answer.

‘I don’t know. I’m due some leave from work. A while, certainly.’ She paused. ‘Then we’ll see.’

‘Please don’t go.’ I was now also choking back tears.

‘I have to.’

Through the window I could see a white taxi sweep into our driveway.

‘At least let me take you to the airport.’

‘No, Sid,’ Marina said. ‘It’s better this way. I’ll tell Sassy you’re busy.’

‘Why don’t I follow you to the school? To say goodbye.’

‘No, Sid,’ she said again, more firmly this time. ‘I’ll call you when we get to Fryslân.’

She then wheeled her suitcase out to the taxi, climbed in, and disappeared through the gateway without so much as a backwards glance.

I stood there for quite some time staring down the road, perhaps forlornly hoping she would turn the taxi round and come back. But, of course, she didn’t.

Had I seen this coming?

I knew things hadn’t been perfect between us for the past few months.

When Saskia had turned nine last August, and with no likelihood of a second child on the horizon, Marina had gone back to working four days a week in the Cancer Research UK laboratories in Lincoln’s Inn, staying over with a colleague in London on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights and only taking the train out of town to our home near Banbury on Thursday evenings.

I hadn’t been very keen on the arrangement, and that was putting it mildly. I’d argued that Saskia needed her mother at home every night, to say nothing of how much I needed her too. But Marina was totally committed to her work, trying to develop a single blood test to detect multiple cancers. ‘The world has needs too,’ she would say. ‘Hence, you and Sassy will simply have to share me.’

And she wasn’t being arrogant or conceited. She was a major player in an international team of molecular chemists sequencing floating fragments of methylated DNA in the blood as an indicator of a whole range of different cancers, and long before there were any physical symptoms. ‘Early detection is the magic key to successful treatment,’ she would often say. ‘One day, not so far away now, everyone will take a simple blood test and then, if it’s positive, swallow an appropriate pill to empower the person’s own immune system to kill off those particular cancer cells before they can do any damage. It’s the Holy Grail.’

But being separated from her for half of every week had certainly put a strain on our relationship. I’d still thought we would get through it okay, and all would be fine. I had no idea it had got so bad that she would leave me.

I looked down at my left hand.

Was it really to blame?