Marina was nothing if not stubborn. She would do things only when she was ready, and not because someone else was telling her to. It had been one of the traits that had attracted me to her in the first place, not least because I was exactly the same. But it had caused a few fireworks when we both wanted to do the complete opposite to the other.

Did I really think there was someone else?

Being away in London for three nights every week would certainly have given her the opportunity. Was I even sure that Sam, the colleague she stayed with, was a Samantha, as she had assured me, and not a Samuel?

What had she said before she left? There are three of us in this relationship and it’s too crowded. But hadn’t she meant that my new hand was the third one, not some other lover?

‘So what then?’ Charles asked.

‘What do you suggest?’ I took another hefty gulp of my whisky.

‘Well, I wouldn’t just sit there on my arse getting drunk and feeling sorry for myself.’

I laughed. ‘That’s rich. It was your idea for me to come here for a drink in the first place. Indeed, you told me it was an order.’

‘To get you here, yes,’ he said. ‘So that we could devise a strategy and form a detailed plan to defeat the enemy.’

He was clearly getting carried away with memories of past sea battles.

‘But Marina is not the enemy,’ I pointed out.

‘An unknown lover might be.’

Good point, I thought … but was attacking another man she loved more than me, if he even existed, the best way to get my wife back? Hardly.

I sat glumly looking at the bottom of my empty glass.

‘Marina will do what Marina wants to do,’ I said profoundly. ‘I simply have to make life with Sid Halley in it more attractive than life without him.’

‘And how do you propose to do that?’ Charles asked, standing up to pour more Scotch into both our glasses.

‘I’m not sure yet. I need to speak to her first to find out what I’m up against.’

Charles nodded, as if agreeing to the strategy. Detailed planning would have to wait for the intelligence to be collected.

In the meantime, I continued to sit on my arse, get drunk and feel sorry for myself.

At six o’clock, I cycled a meandering path back over the hill to my house in the village of Nutwell as the late March light was beginning to fail. Only two more days, I thought, and the clocks would go forward and the longer evenings would be here.

Spring had arrived. A time for renewal and rebirth. But would it be a renewal of my marriage or a rebirth of living alone?